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Sulpizio V, Teghil A, Pitzalis S, Boccia M. Common and specific activations supporting optic flow processing and navigation as revealed by a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies. Brain Struct Funct 2024:10.1007/s00429-024-02790-8. [PMID: 38592557 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-024-02790-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/27/2023] [Accepted: 03/12/2024] [Indexed: 04/10/2024]
Abstract
Optic flow provides useful information in service of spatial navigation. However, whether brain networks supporting these two functions overlap is still unclear. Here we used Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) to assess the correspondence between brain correlates of optic flow processing and spatial navigation and their specific neural activations. Since computational and connectivity evidence suggests that visual input from optic flow provides information mainly during egocentric navigation, we further tested the correspondence between brain correlates of optic flow processing and that of both egocentric and allocentric navigation. Optic flow processing shared activation with egocentric (but not allocentric) navigation in the anterior precuneus, suggesting its role in providing information about self-motion, as derived from the analysis of optic flow, in service of egocentric navigation. We further documented that optic flow perception and navigation are partially segregated into two functional and anatomical networks, i.e., the dorsal and the ventromedial networks. Present results point to a dynamic interplay between the dorsal and ventral visual pathways aimed at coordinating visually guided navigation in the environment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
- Department of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, University of Molise, Campobasso, Italy
| | - Alice Teghil
- Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Sabrina Pitzalis
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico'', Rome, Italy
| | - Maddalena Boccia
- Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.
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2
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Sulpizio V, von Gal A, Galati G, Fattori P, Galletti C, Pitzalis S. Neural sensitivity to translational self- and object-motion velocities. Hum Brain Mapp 2024; 45:e26571. [PMID: 38224544 PMCID: PMC10785198 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.26571] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/08/2023] [Revised: 12/04/2023] [Accepted: 12/07/2023] [Indexed: 01/17/2024] Open
Abstract
The ability to detect and assess world-relative object-motion is a critical computation performed by the visual system. This computation, however, is greatly complicated by the observer's movements, which generate a global pattern of motion on the observer's retina. How the visual system implements this computation is poorly understood. Since we are potentially able to detect a moving object if its motion differs in velocity (or direction) from the expected optic flow generated by our own motion, here we manipulated the relative motion velocity between the observer and the object within a stationary scene as a strategy to test how the brain accomplishes object-motion detection. Specifically, we tested the neural sensitivity of brain regions that are known to respond to egomotion-compatible visual motion (i.e., egomotion areas: cingulate sulcus visual area, posterior cingulate sulcus area, posterior insular cortex [PIC], V6+, V3A, IPSmot/VIP, and MT+) to a combination of different velocities of visually induced translational self- and object-motion within a virtual scene while participants were instructed to detect object-motion. To this aim, we combined individual surface-based brain mapping, task-evoked activity by functional magnetic resonance imaging, and parametric and representational similarity analyses. We found that all the egomotion regions (except area PIC) responded to all the possible combinations of self- and object-motion and were modulated by the self-motion velocity. Interestingly, we found that, among all the egomotion areas, only MT+, V6+, and V3A were further modulated by object-motion velocities, hence reflecting their possible role in discriminating between distinct velocities of self- and object-motion. We suggest that these egomotion regions may be involved in the complex computation required for detecting scene-relative object-motion during self-motion.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and NeuroimagingSanta Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia)RomeItaly
- Department of PsychologySapienza UniversityRomeItaly
| | | | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and NeuroimagingSanta Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia)RomeItaly
- Department of PsychologySapienza UniversityRomeItaly
| | - Patrizia Fattori
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor SciencesUniversity of BolognaBolognaItaly
| | - Claudio Galletti
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor SciencesUniversity of BolognaBolognaItaly
| | - Sabrina Pitzalis
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and NeuroimagingSanta Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia)RomeItaly
- Department of Movement, Human and Health SciencesUniversity of Rome “Foro Italico”RomeItaly
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3
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Sulpizio V, Fattori P, Pitzalis S, Galletti C. Functional organization of the caudal part of the human superior parietal lobule. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2023; 153:105357. [PMID: 37572972 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105357] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/16/2023] [Revised: 07/31/2023] [Accepted: 08/09/2023] [Indexed: 08/14/2023]
Abstract
Like in macaque, the caudal portion of the human superior parietal lobule (SPL) plays a key role in a series of perceptive, visuomotor and somatosensory processes. Here, we review the functional properties of three separate portions of the caudal SPL, i.e., the posterior parieto-occipital sulcus (POs), the anterior POs, and the anterior part of the caudal SPL. We propose that the posterior POs is mainly dedicated to the analysis of visual motion cues useful for object motion detection during self-motion and for spatial navigation, while the more anterior parts are implicated in visuomotor control of limb actions. The anterior POs is mainly involved in using the spotlight of attention to guide reach-to-grasp hand movements, especially in dynamic environments. The anterior part of the caudal SPL plays a central role in visually guided locomotion, being implicated in controlling leg-related movements as well as the four limbs interaction with the environment, and in encoding egomotion-compatible optic flow. Together, these functions reveal how the caudal SPL is strongly implicated in skilled visually-guided behaviors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.
| | - Patrizia Fattori
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Sabrina Pitzalis
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy; Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico'', Rome, Italy
| | - Claudio Galletti
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
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4
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Capotosto P, Sulpizio V, Galati G, Baldassarre A. Visuo-spatial attention and semantic memory competition in the parietal cortex. Sci Rep 2023; 13:6218. [PMID: 37069425 PMCID: PMC10110504 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-33533-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/22/2022] [Accepted: 04/14/2023] [Indexed: 04/19/2023] Open
Abstract
Neuroimaging studies associate specific functional roles to distinct brain regions investigating separate cognitive processes using dedicated tasks. For example, using both correlative (i.e., fMRI) and causal (i.e., TMS) approaches it has been shown the involvement of intra-parietal sulcus (IPS), as part of the dorsal attention network, in spatial attentional tasks as well as the importance of the angular gyrus (AG), as part of the default mode network, during the selection of relevant information in semantic memory. Nonetheless, in our daily life attention and semantic memory are rarely needed in isolation. In the present TMS study we investigate how the brain combines attentional and semantic memory demands in a single task. Results showed that, compared to a pseudo-TMS, stimulation of IPS, but not AG, affects behavioral performance, thus suggesting its preponderant role in such a combined task. Moreover, the lack of difference between the effect of IPS and AG stimulations seems to suggest that the two regions may be coactivated or that a third-party source might indirectly mediate the interaction between the two networks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Paolo Capotosto
- Department of Neuroscience Imaging and Clinical Science, University "G. d'Annunzio", Via dei Vestini 33, 66100, Chieti, Italy.
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, 00185, Rome, Italy
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, 00185, Rome, Italy
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Antonello Baldassarre
- Department of Neuroscience Imaging and Clinical Science, University "G. d'Annunzio", Via dei Vestini 33, 66100, Chieti, Italy
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5
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Bencivenga F, Tullo MG, Sulpizio V, Galati G. Interhemispheric interplay between the left and right premotor cortex during grasping as assessed by dynamic causal modelling. Sci Rep 2023; 13:4958. [PMID: 36973324 PMCID: PMC10042845 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-31602-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/03/2022] [Accepted: 03/14/2023] [Indexed: 03/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Research on the contribution of the ipsilateral hemisphere to unilateral movements, and how it is mediated by transcallosal connections, has so far provided contradictory findings. By using dynamic causal modelling (DCM) and Parametric Empirical Bayes analyses applied to fMRI data, we sought to describe effective connectivity during pantomimed and imagined right-hand grasping within the grasping network, namely the anterior intraparietal sulcus, ventral and dorsal (PMd) premotor cortex, supplementary motor area and primary motor cortex (M1). The two-fold aim of the present work was to explore a) whether right and left parieto-frontal areas show similar connectivity couplings, and b) the interhemispheric dynamics between these regions across the two hemispheres. We detected a network architecture comparable across hemispheres during executed but not imagined grasping movements. Furthermore, during pantomimed grasping the interhemispheric crosstalk was mainly driven by premotor areas: we found an inhibitory influence from the right PMd toward the left premotor and motor areas and excitatory couplings between homologous ventral premotor and supplementary motor regions. Overall, our results support the view that dissociable components of unilateral grasping execution are encoded by a non-lateralized set of brain areas complexly intertwined by interhemispheric dynamics, whereas motor imagery obeys different principles.
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Affiliation(s)
- Federica Bencivenga
- PhD Program in Behavioral Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Via Dei Marsi, 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.
- Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.
| | - Maria Giulia Tullo
- Department of Translational and Precision Medicine, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Via Dei Marsi, 78, 00185, Rome, Italy
- Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Via Dei Marsi, 78, 00185, Rome, Italy
- Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
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6
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Cardelli L, Tullo MG, Galati G, Sulpizio V. Effect of optic flow on spatial updating: insight from an immersive virtual reality study. Exp Brain Res 2023; 241:865-874. [PMID: 36781456 DOI: 10.1007/s00221-023-06567-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/11/2022] [Accepted: 02/03/2023] [Indexed: 02/15/2023]
Abstract
Self-motion information is required to keep track of where we are with respect to our environment (spatial updating). Visual signals such as optic flow are relevant to provide information about self-motion, especially in the absence of vestibular and/or proprioceptive cues generated by physical movement. However, the role of optic flow on spatial updating is still debated. A virtual reality system based on a head-mounted display was used to allow participants to experience a self-motion sensation within a naturalistic environment in the absence of physical movement. We asked participants to keep track of spatial positions of a target during simulated self-motion while manipulating the availability of optic flow coming from the lower part of the environment (ground plane). In each trial, the ground could be a green lawn (optic flow ON) or covered in snow (optic flow OFF). We observed that the lack of optic flow on the ground had a detrimental effect on spatial updating. Furthermore, we explored the interaction between the optic flow availability and different characteristics of self-motion: we observed that increasing self-motion speed had a detrimental effect on spatial updating, especially in the absence of optic flow, while self-motion direction (leftward, forward, rightward) and path (translational and curvilinear) had no statically significant effect. Overall, we demonstrated that, in the absence of some idiothetic cues, the optic flow provided by the ground has a dominant role for the self-motion estimation and, hence, for the ability to update the spatial relationships between one's position and the position of the surrounding objects.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lisa Cardelli
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Via Dei Marsi 78, 00185, Rome, Italy
| | - Maria Giulia Tullo
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Via Dei Marsi 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.,Department of Translational and Precision Medicine, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Via Dei Marsi 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.,Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Via Dei Marsi 78, 00185, Rome, Italy. .,Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.
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7
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Sulpizio V, Strappini F, Fattori P, Galati G, Galletti C, Pecchinenda A, Pitzalis S. The human middle temporal cortex responds to both active leg movements and egomotion-compatible visual motion. Brain Struct Funct 2022; 227:2573-2592. [PMID: 35963915 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-022-02549-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/23/2021] [Accepted: 08/03/2022] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
The human middle-temporal region MT+ is highly specialized in processing visual motion. However, recent studies have shown that this region is modulated by extraretinal signals, suggesting a possible involvement in processing motion information also from non-visual modalities. Here, we used functional MRI data to investigate the influence of retinal and extraretinal signals on MT+ in a large sample of subjects. Moreover, we used resting-state functional MRI to assess how the subdivisions of MT+ (i.e., MST, FST, MT, and V4t) are functionally connected. We first compared responses in MST, FST, MT, and V4t to coherent vs. random visual motion. We found that only MST and FST were positively activated by coherent motion. Furthermore, regional analyses revealed that MST and FST were positively activated by leg, but not arm, movements, while MT and V4t were deactivated by arm, but not leg, movements. Taken together, regional analyses revealed a visuomotor role for the anterior areas MST and FST and a pure visual role for the anterior areas MT and V4t. These findings were mirrored by the pattern of functional connections between these areas and the rest of the brain. Visual and visuomotor regions showed distinct patterns of functional connectivity, with the latter preferentially connected with the somatosensory and motor areas representing leg and foot. Overall, these findings reveal a functional sensitivity for coherent visual motion and lower-limb movements in MST and FST, suggesting their possible involvement in integrating sensory and motor information to perform locomotion.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentina Sulpizio
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | | | - Patrizia Fattori
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Claudio Galletti
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | | | - Sabrina Pitzalis
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico'', 00194, Rome, Italy.
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8
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Tullo MG, Almgren H, Van de Steen F, Sulpizio V, Marinazzo D, Galati G. Individual differences in mental imagery modulate effective connectivity of scene-selective regions during resting state. Brain Struct Funct 2022; 227:1831-1842. [PMID: 35312868 PMCID: PMC9098601 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-022-02475-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/07/2021] [Accepted: 02/23/2022] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Successful navigation relies on the ability to identify, perceive, and correctly process the spatial structure of a scene. It is well known that visual mental imagery plays a crucial role in navigation. Indeed, cortical regions encoding navigationally relevant information are also active during mental imagery of navigational scenes. However, it remains unknown whether their intrinsic activity and connectivity reflect the individuals' ability to imagine a scene. Here, we primarily investigated the intrinsic causal interactions among scene-selective brain regions such as Parahipoccampal Place Area (PPA), Retrosplenial Complex, and Occipital Place Area (OPA) using Dynamic Causal Modelling for resting-state functional magnetic resonance data. Second, we tested whether resting-state effective connectivity parameters among scene-selective regions could reflect individual differences in mental imagery in our sample, as assessed by the self-reported Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire. We found an inhibitory influence of occipito-medial on temporal regions, and an excitatory influence of more anterior on more medial and posterior brain regions. Moreover, we found that a key role in imagery is played by the connection strength from OPA to PPA, especially in the left hemisphere, since the influence of the signal between these scene-selective regions positively correlated with good mental imagery ability. Our investigation contributes to the understanding of the complexity of the causal interaction among brain regions involved in navigation and provides new insight in understanding how an essential ability, such as mental imagery, can be explained by the intrinsic fluctuation of brain signal.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria Giulia Tullo
- Department of Translational and Precision Medicine, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Via Benevento, 6, 00161, Roma, RM, Italy. .,Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy. .,PhD Program in Behavioral Neuroscience, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
| | - Hannes Almgren
- Department of Data Analysis, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.,Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.,Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
| | - Frederik Van de Steen
- Department of Data Analysis, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.,AIMS, Center For Neurosciences, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussel, Belgium
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy.,Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
| | - Daniele Marinazzo
- Department of Data Analysis, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Translational and Precision Medicine, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Via Benevento, 6, 00161, Roma, RM, Italy.,Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy
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9
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Di Marco S, Sulpizio V, Bellagamba M, Fattori P, Galati G, Galletti C, Lappe M, Maltempo T, Pitzalis S. Multisensory integration in cortical regions responding to locomotion-related visual and somatomotor signals. Neuroimage 2021; 244:118581. [PMID: 34543763 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118581] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/18/2021] [Revised: 09/08/2021] [Accepted: 09/14/2021] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
During real-world locomotion, in order to be able to move along a path or avoid an obstacle, continuous changes in self-motion direction (i.e. heading) are needed. Control of heading changes during locomotion requires the integration of multiple signals (i.e., visual, somatomotor, vestibular). Recent fMRI studies have shown that both somatomotor areas (human PEc [hPEc], human PE [hPE], primary somatosensory cortex [S-I]) and egomotion visual regions (cingulate sulcus visual area [CSv], posterior cingulate area [pCi], posterior insular cortex [PIC]) respond to either leg movements and egomotion-compatible visual stimulations, suggesting a role in the analysis of both visual attributes of egomotion and somatomotor signals with the aim of guiding locomotion. However, whether these regions are able to integrate egomotion-related visual signals with somatomotor inputs coming from leg movements during heading changes remains an open question. Here we used a combined approach of individual functional localizers and task-evoked activity by fMRI. In thirty subjects we first localized three egomotion areas (CSv, pCi, PIC) and three somatomotor regions (S-I, hPE, hPEc). Then, we tested their responses in a multisensory integration experiment combining visual and somatomotor signals relevant to locomotion in congruent or incongruent trials. We used an fMR-adaptation paradigm to explore the sensitivity to the repeated presentation of these bimodal stimuli in the six regions of interest. Results revealed that hPE, S-I and CSv showed an adaptation effect regardless of congruency, while PIC, pCi and hPEc showed sensitivity to congruency. PIC exhibited a preference for congruent trials compared to incongruent trials. Areas pCi and hPEc exhibited an adaptation effect only for congruent and incongruent trials, respectively. PIC, pCi and hPEc sensitivity to the congruency relationship between visual (locomotion-compatible) cues and (leg-related) somatomotor inputs suggests that these regions are involved in multisensory integration processes, likely in order to guide/adjust leg movements during heading changes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sara Di Marco
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy; Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy; Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Martina Bellagamba
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy; Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico'', Rome, Italy
| | - Patrizia Fattori
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy; Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Claudio Galletti
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Markus Lappe
- Institute for Psychology, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany
| | - Teresa Maltempo
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy; Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico'', Rome, Italy
| | - Sabrina Pitzalis
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy; Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico'', Rome, Italy
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10
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Costa A, Bivona U, Sulpizio V, Nappo R, Mastrilli L, Formisano R, Aloisi M, Contrada M, Caltagirone C, Galati G. Reduced Priming Effect for Visual-Spatial Perspective Taking in Patients With Severe Acquired Brain Injury. Arch Clin Neuropsychol 2021; 37:227-239. [PMID: 34423813 DOI: 10.1093/arclin/acab069] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/08/2021] [Revised: 07/12/2021] [Accepted: 07/21/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
OBJECTIVE Social cognition can be impaired after a severe acquired brain injury (sABI), but mechanisms potentially underlying these difficulties remain to be clarified. This study aimed at investigating perspective taking ability in individuals with sABI. METHOD Twenty individuals with sABI and 20 healthy controls (HCs) have been enrolled in this case-control study. All participants were submitted to an experimental visual-spatial priming memory procedure and a self-report assessment of perspective taking (i.e., the Interpersonal Reactivity Index [IRI]). Individuals with sABI were submitted to neuropsychological tests to assess executive subcomponents, working memory, and visual attention. RESULTS The analysis on self-report scales data documents a significant between groups difference in the IRI-Fantasy subscale, with HCs showing a higher tendency to imaginatively transpose oneself into fictional situations than individuals with sABI. Analysis of performance on the experimental procedure revealed the priming effect in HCs but not in sABI individuals. Moreover, individuals with sABI performed significantly poorer than HCs on the indices of the experimental procedure. CONCLUSIONS Our data preliminarily demonstrated that visual-spatial perspective taking is reduced after sABI. Findings above could give some clues for the rehabilitative intervention in sABI and suggest the possible application of the procedure here used in assessing perspective taking after sABI.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alberto Costa
- Niccolò Cusano University, Rome, Italy.,IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy
| | | | - Valentina Sulpizio
- IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.,Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
| | | | | | | | | | | | - Carlo Caltagirone
- IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.,Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.,Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
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11
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Sulpizio V, Berchicci M, Di Russo F, Galati G, Grasso MG, Iosa M, Lucci G, Paolucci S, Ripani M, Pitzalis S. Effect of Exoskeleton-Assisted Rehabilitation Over Prefrontal Cortex in Multiple Sclerosis Patients: A Neuroimaging Pilot Study. Brain Topogr 2021; 34:651-663. [PMID: 34181126 PMCID: PMC8384810 DOI: 10.1007/s10548-021-00858-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/20/2021] [Accepted: 06/13/2021] [Indexed: 01/05/2023]
Abstract
Application of a passive and fully articulated exoskeleton, called Human Body Posturizer (HBP), has been demonstrated to improve mobility, response accuracy and ambulation in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. By using functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) during a visuomotor discrimination task, we performed a pilot study to evaluate the effect of HBP over the neural correlates of motor and cognitive functions which are typically impaired in MS patients. Specifically, we tested the effect of a 6-week multidisciplinary rehabilitation intervention on two groups of MS patients: a control group who followed a standard physiotherapeutic rehabilitation protocol, and an experimental group who used the HBP during physical exercises in addition to the standard protocol. We found that, after treatment, the experimental group exhibited a significant lower activity (as compared to the control group) in the inferior frontal gyrus. This post-treatment activity reduction can be explained as a retour to a normal range, being the amount of iFg activity observed in the experimental patients very similar to that observed in healthy subjects. These findings indicate that the use of HBP during rehabilitation intervention normalizes the prefrontal activity, mitigating the cortical hyperactivity associated to MS.
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Affiliation(s)
- V Sulpizio
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy. .,Department of Psychology, Sapienza" University of Rome, Via dei Marsi, 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.
| | - M Berchicci
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico", Rome, Italy
| | - F Di Russo
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.,Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico", Rome, Italy
| | - G Galati
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.,Department of Psychology, Sapienza" University of Rome, Via dei Marsi, 78, 00185, Rome, Italy
| | - M G Grasso
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - M Iosa
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.,Department of Psychology, Sapienza" University of Rome, Via dei Marsi, 78, 00185, Rome, Italy
| | - G Lucci
- Department of Human Sciences, Marconi University, Rome, Italy
| | - S Paolucci
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - M Ripani
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico", Rome, Italy
| | - Sabrina Pitzalis
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.,Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico", Rome, Italy
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12
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Boccia M, Sulpizio V, Bencivenga F, Guariglia C, Galati G. Neural representations underlying mental imagery as unveiled by representation similarity analysis. Brain Struct Funct 2021; 226:1511-1531. [PMID: 33821379 PMCID: PMC8096739 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-021-02266-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/28/2020] [Accepted: 03/23/2021] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
It is commonly acknowledged that visual imagery and perception rely on the same content-dependent brain areas in the high-level visual cortex (HVC). However, the way in which our brain processes and organizes previous acquired knowledge to allow the generation of mental images is still a matter of debate. Here, we performed a representation similarity analysis of three previous fMRI experiments conducted in our laboratory to characterize the neural representation underlying imagery and perception of objects, buildings and faces and to disclose possible dissimilarities in the neural structure of such representations. To this aim, we built representational dissimilarity matrices (RDMs) by computing multivariate distances between the activity patterns associated with each pair of stimuli in the content-dependent areas of the HVC and HC. We found that spatial information is widely coded in the HVC during perception (i.e. RSC, PPA and OPA) and imagery (OPA and PPA). Also, visual information seems to be coded in both preferred and non-preferred regions of the HVC, supporting a distributed view of encoding. Overall, the present results shed light upon the spatial coding of imagined and perceived exemplars in the HVC.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maddalena Boccia
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Via dei Marsi, 78, 00185, Rome, Italy. .,Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Via dei Marsi, 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.,Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Federica Bencivenga
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Via dei Marsi, 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.,Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.,PhD Program in Behavioral Neuroscience, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
| | - Cecilia Guariglia
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Via dei Marsi, 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.,Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Via dei Marsi, 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.,Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
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13
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Maltempo T, Pitzalis S, Bellagamba M, Di Marco S, Fattori P, Galati G, Galletti C, Sulpizio V. Lower visual field preference for the visuomotor control of limb movements in the human dorsomedial parietal cortex. Brain Struct Funct 2021; 226:2989-3005. [PMID: 33738579 PMCID: PMC8541995 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-021-02254-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/17/2020] [Accepted: 03/03/2021] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Visual cues coming from the lower visual field (VF) play an important role in the visual guidance of upper and lower limb movements. A recently described region situated in the dorsomedial parietal cortex, area hPEc (Pitzalis et al. in NeuroImage 202:116092, 2019), might have a role in integrating visually derived information with somatomotor signals to guide limb interaction with the environment. In macaque, it has been demonstrated that PEc receives visual information mostly from the lower visual field but, to date, there has been no systematic investigation of VF preference in the newly defined human homologue of macaque area PEc (hPEc). Here we examined the VF preferences of hPEc while participants performed a visuomotor task implying spatially directed delayed eye-, hand- and foot-movements towards different spatial locations within the VF. By analyzing data as a function of the different target locations towards which upcoming movements were planned (and then executed), we observed the presence of asymmetry in the vertical dimension of VF in area hPEc, being this area more strongly activated by limb movements directed towards visual targets located in the lower compared to the upper VF. This result confirms the view, first advanced in macaque monkey, that PEc is involved in processing visual information to guide body interaction with the external environment, including locomotion. We also observed a contralateral dominance for the lower VF preference in the foot selective somatomotor cortex anterior to hPEc. This result might reflect the role of this cortex (which includes areas PE and S-I) in providing highly topographically organized signals, likely useful to achieve an appropriate foot posture during locomotion.
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Affiliation(s)
- Teresa Maltempo
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico", Rome, Italy.,Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Sabrina Pitzalis
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico", Rome, Italy.,Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Martina Bellagamba
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico", Rome, Italy.,Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Sara Di Marco
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico", Rome, Italy.,Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.,Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185, Rome, Italy
| | - Patrizia Fattori
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.,Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185, Rome, Italy
| | - Claudio Galletti
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy. .,Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy. .,Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.
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14
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Bencivenga F, Sulpizio V, Tullo MG, Galati G. Assessing the effective connectivity of premotor areas during real vs imagined grasping: a DCM-PEB approach. Neuroimage 2021; 230:117806. [PMID: 33524574 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.117806] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/29/2020] [Revised: 01/20/2021] [Accepted: 01/23/2021] [Indexed: 12/16/2022] Open
Abstract
The parieto-frontal circuit underlying grasping, which requires the serial involvement of the anterior intraparietal area (aIPs) and the ventral premotor cortex (PMv), has been recently extended enlightening the role of the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd). The supplementary motor area (SMA) has been also suggested to encode grip force for grasping actions; furthermore, both PMd and SMA are known to play a crucial role in motor imagery. Here, we aimed at assessing the dynamic couplings between left aIPs, PMv, PMd, SMA and primary motor cortex (M1) by comparing executed and imagined right-hand grasping, using Dynamic Causal Modelling (DCM) and Parametrical Empirical Bayes (PEB) analyses. 24 subjects underwent an fMRI exam (3T) during which they were asked to perform or imagine a grasping movement visually cued by photographs of commonly used objects. We tested whether the two conditions a) exert a modulatory effect on both forward and feedback couplings among our areas of interest, and b) differ in terms of strength and sign of these parameters. Results of the real condition confirmed the serial involvement of aIPs, PMv and M1. PMv also exerted a positive influence on PMd and SMA, but received an inhibitory feedback only from PMd. Our results suggest that a general motor program for grasping is planned by the aIPs-PMv circuit; then, PMd and SMA encode high-level features of the movement. During imagery, the connection strength from aIPs to PMv was weaker and the information flow stopped in PMv; thus, a less complex motor program was planned. Moreover, results suggest that SMA and PMd cooperate to prevent motor execution. In conclusion, the comparison between execution and imagery reveals that during grasping premotor areas dynamically interplay in different ways, depending on task demands.
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Affiliation(s)
- Federica Bencivenga
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; PhD program in Behavioral Neuroscience, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Maria Giulia Tullo
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; PhD program in Behavioral Neuroscience, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
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15
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Di Marco S, Fattori P, Galati G, Galletti C, Lappe M, Maltempo T, Serra C, Sulpizio V, Pitzalis S. Preference for locomotion-compatible curved paths and forward direction of self-motion in somatomotor and visual areas. Cortex 2021; 137:74-92. [PMID: 33607346 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.12.021] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/16/2020] [Revised: 11/20/2020] [Accepted: 12/05/2020] [Indexed: 12/11/2022]
Abstract
During locomotion, leg movements define the direction of walking (forward or backward) and the path one is taking (straight or curved). These aspects of locomotion produce characteristic visual motion patterns during movement. Here, we tested whether cortical regions responding to either egomotion-compatible visual motion, or leg movements, or both, are sensitive to these locomotion-relevant aspects of visual motion. We compared a curved path (typically the visual feedback of a changing direction of movement in the environment) to a linear path for simulated forward and backward motion in an event-related fMRI experiment. We used an individual surface-based approach and two functional localizers to define (1) six egomotion-related areas (V6+, V3A, intraparietal motion area [IPSmot], cingulate sulcus visual area [CSv], posterior cingulate area [pCi], posterior insular cortex [PIC]) using the flow field stimulus and (2) three leg-related cortical regions (human PEc [hPEc], human PE [hPE] and primary somatosensory cortex [S-I]) using a somatomotor task. Then, we extracted the response from all these regions with respect to the main event-related fMRI experiment, consisting of passive viewing of an optic flow stimulus, simulating a forward or backward direction of self-motion in either linear or curved path. Results showed that some regions have a significant preference for the curved path motion (hPEc, hPE, S-I, IPSmot) or a preference for the forward motion (V3A), while other regions have both a significant preference for the curved path motion and for the forward compared to backward motion (V6+, CSv, pCi). We did not find any significant effects of the present stimuli in PIC. Since controlling locomotion mainly means controlling changes of walking direction in the environment during forward self-motion, such a differential functional profile among these cortical regions suggests that they play a differentiated role in the visual guidance of locomotion.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sara Di Marco
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico'', Rome, Italy; Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.
| | - Patrizia Fattori
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy; Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
| | - Claudio Galletti
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Markus Lappe
- Institute for Psychology, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany
| | - Teresa Maltempo
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico'', Rome, Italy; Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Chiara Serra
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico'', Rome, Italy; Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy; Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Sabrina Pitzalis
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico'', Rome, Italy; Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
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16
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Sulpizio V, Galati G, Fattori P, Galletti C, Pitzalis S. A common neural substrate for processing scenes and egomotion-compatible visual motion. Brain Struct Funct 2020; 225:2091-2110. [PMID: 32647918 PMCID: PMC7473967 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-020-02112-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 32] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/05/2020] [Accepted: 07/02/2020] [Indexed: 12/20/2022]
Abstract
Neuroimaging studies have revealed two separate classes of category-selective regions specialized in optic flow (egomotion-compatible) processing and in scene/place perception. Despite the importance of both optic flow and scene/place recognition to estimate changes in position and orientation within the environment during self-motion, the possible functional link between egomotion- and scene-selective regions has not yet been established. Here we reanalyzed functional magnetic resonance images from a large sample of participants performing two well-known “localizer” fMRI experiments, consisting in passive viewing of navigationally relevant stimuli such as buildings and places (scene/place stimulus) and coherently moving fields of dots simulating the visual stimulation during self-motion (flow fields). After interrogating the egomotion-selective areas with respect to the scene/place stimulus and the scene-selective areas with respect to flow fields, we found that the egomotion-selective areas V6+ and pIPS/V3A responded bilaterally more to scenes/places compared to faces, and all the scene-selective areas (parahippocampal place area or PPA, retrosplenial complex or RSC, and occipital place area or OPA) responded more to egomotion-compatible optic flow compared to random motion. The conjunction analysis between scene/place and flow field stimuli revealed that the most important focus of common activation was found in the dorsolateral parieto-occipital cortex, spanning the scene-selective OPA and the egomotion-selective pIPS/V3A. Individual inspection of the relative locations of these two regions revealed a partial overlap and a similar response profile to an independent low-level visual motion stimulus, suggesting that OPA and pIPS/V3A may be part of a unique motion-selective complex specialized in encoding both egomotion- and scene-relevant information, likely for the control of navigation in a structured environment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences-DIBINEM, University of Bologna, Piazza di Porta San Donato 2, 40126, Bologna, Italy. .,Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.,Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
| | - Patrizia Fattori
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences-DIBINEM, University of Bologna, Piazza di Porta San Donato 2, 40126, Bologna, Italy
| | - Claudio Galletti
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences-DIBINEM, University of Bologna, Piazza di Porta San Donato 2, 40126, Bologna, Italy
| | - Sabrina Pitzalis
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.,Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico'', Rome, Italy
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Berchicci M, Sulpizio V, Mento G, Lucci G, Civale N, Galati G, Pitzalis S, Spinelli D, Di Russo F. Prompting future events: Effects of temporal cueing and time on task on brain preparation to action. Brain Cogn 2020; 141:105565. [DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2020.105565] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/27/2019] [Revised: 03/11/2020] [Accepted: 03/19/2020] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
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Pitzalis S, Serra C, Sulpizio V, Committeri G, de Pasquale F, Fattori P, Galletti C, Sepe R, Galati G. Neural bases of self- and object-motion in a naturalistic vision. Hum Brain Mapp 2019; 41:1084-1111. [PMID: 31713304 PMCID: PMC7267932 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24862] [Citation(s) in RCA: 38] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2019] [Revised: 10/19/2019] [Accepted: 10/31/2019] [Indexed: 12/16/2022] Open
Abstract
To plan movements toward objects our brain must recognize whether retinal displacement is due to self-motion and/or to object-motion. Here, we aimed to test whether motion areas are able to segregate these types of motion. We combined an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, brain mapping techniques, and wide-field stimulation to study the responsivity of motion-sensitive areas to pure and combined self- and object-motion conditions during virtual movies of a train running within a realistic landscape. We observed a selective response in MT to the pure object-motion condition, and in medial (PEc, pCi, CSv, and CMA) and lateral (PIC and LOR) areas to the pure self-motion condition. Some other regions (like V6) responded more to complex visual stimulation where both object- and self-motion were present. Among all, we found that some motion regions (V3A, LOR, MT, V6, and IPSmot) could extract object-motion information from the overall motion, recognizing the real movement of the train even when the images remain still (on the screen), or moved, because of self-movements. We propose that these motion areas might be good candidates for the "flow parsing mechanism," that is the capability to extract object-motion information from retinal motion signals by subtracting out the optic flow components.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sabrina Pitzalis
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome Foro Italico, Rome, Italy.,Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Chiara Serra
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome Foro Italico, Rome, Italy.,Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.,Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Giorgia Committeri
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, and Institute for Advanced Biomedical Technologies (ITAB), University G. d'Annunzio, Chieti, Italy
| | - Francesco de Pasquale
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, and Institute for Advanced Biomedical Technologies (ITAB), University G. d'Annunzio, Chieti, Italy.,Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Teramo, Teramo, Italy
| | - Patrizia Fattori
- Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Claudio Galletti
- Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Rosamaria Sepe
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, and Institute for Advanced Biomedical Technologies (ITAB), University G. d'Annunzio, Chieti, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation Unit, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.,Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
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19
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Pitzalis S, Serra C, Sulpizio V, Di Marco S, Fattori P, Galati G, Galletti C. A putative human homologue of the macaque area PEc. Neuroimage 2019; 202:116092. [PMID: 31408715 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.116092] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2019] [Accepted: 08/08/2019] [Indexed: 12/21/2022] Open
Abstract
The cortical area PEc is anatomically and functionally well-defined in macaque, but it is unknown whether it has a counterpart in human. Since we know that macaque PEc, but not the nearby posterior regions, hosts a lower limb representation, in an attempt to recognize a possible human PEc we looked for the existence of leg representations in the human parietal cortex using individual cortical surface-based analysis, task-evoked paradigms and resting-state functional connectivity. fMRI images were acquired while thirty-one participants performed long-range leg movements through an in-house MRI-compatible set-up. We revealed the existence of multiple leg representations in the human dorsomedial parietal cortex, here defined as S-I (somatosensory-I), hPE (human PE, in the postcentral sulcus), and hPEc (human PEc, in the anterior precuneus). Among the three "leg" regions, hPEc had a unique functional profile, in that it was the only one responding to both arm and leg movements, to both hand-pointing and foot pointing movements, and to flow field visual stimulation, very similar to macaque area PEc. In addition, hPEc showed functional connections with the somatomotor regions hosting a lower limb representation, again as in macaque area PEc. Therefore, based on similarity in brain position, functional organization, cortical connections, and relationship with the neighboring areas, we propose that this cortical region is the human homologue of macaque area PEc.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sabrina Pitzalis
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico", 00135, Rome, Italy; Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), 00142, Rome, Italy.
| | - Chiara Serra
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico", 00135, Rome, Italy; Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), 00142, Rome, Italy
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), 00142, Rome, Italy; Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, 40126, Bologna, Italy
| | - Sara Di Marco
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome ''Foro Italico", 00135, Rome, Italy; Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), 00142, Rome, Italy
| | - Patrizia Fattori
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, 40126, Bologna, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), 00142, Rome, Italy; Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, 00185, Rome, Italy
| | - Claudio Galletti
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, 40126, Bologna, Italy
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Serra C, Galletti C, Di Marco S, Fattori P, Galati G, Sulpizio V, Pitzalis S. Egomotion-related visual areas respond to active leg movements. Hum Brain Mapp 2019; 40:3174-3191. [PMID: 30924264 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24589] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/23/2018] [Revised: 03/07/2019] [Accepted: 03/20/2019] [Indexed: 12/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Monkey neurophysiology and human neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that passive viewing of optic flow stimuli activates a cortical network of temporal, parietal, insular, and cingulate visual motion regions. Here, we tested whether the human visual motion areas involved in processing optic flow signals simulating self-motion are also activated by active lower limb movements, and hence are likely involved in guiding human locomotion. To this aim, we used a combined approach of task-evoked activity and resting-state functional connectivity by fMRI. We localized a set of six egomotion-responsive visual areas (V6+, V3A, intraparietal motion/ventral intraparietal [IPSmot/VIP], cingulate sulcus visual area [CSv], posterior cingulate sulcus area [pCi], posterior insular cortex [PIC]) by using optic flow. We tested their response to a motor task implying long-range active leg movements. Results revealed that, among these visually defined areas, CSv, pCi, and PIC responded to leg movements (visuomotor areas), while V6+, V3A, and IPSmot/VIP did not (visual areas). Functional connectivity analysis showed that visuomotor areas are connected to the cingulate motor areas, the supplementary motor area, and notably to the medial portion of the somatosensory cortex, which represents legs and feet. We suggest that CSv, pCi, and PIC perform the visual analysis of egomotion-like signals to provide sensory information to the motor system with the aim of guiding locomotion.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chiara Serra
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico", Rome, Italy.,Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Claudio Galletti
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Sara Di Marco
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico", Rome, Italy.,Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
| | - Patrizia Fattori
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy.,Brain Imaging Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Sabrina Pitzalis
- Department of Movement, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome "Foro Italico", Rome, Italy.,Department of Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging, Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia), Rome, Italy
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Boccia M, Sulpizio V, Teghil A, Palermo L, Piccardi L, Galati G, Guariglia C. The dynamic contribution of the high-level visual cortex to imagery and perception. Hum Brain Mapp 2019; 40:2449-2463. [PMID: 30702203 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24535] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/17/2018] [Revised: 01/16/2019] [Accepted: 01/21/2019] [Indexed: 01/19/2023] Open
Abstract
Mental imagery and visual perception rely on the same content-dependent brain areas in the high-level visual cortex (HVC). However, little is known about dynamic mechanisms in these areas during imagery and perception. Here we disentangled local and inter-regional dynamic mechanisms underlying imagery and perception in the HVC and the hippocampus (HC), a key region for memory retrieval during imagery. Nineteen healthy participants watched or imagined a familiar scene or face during fMRI acquisition. The neural code for familiar landmarks and faces was distributed across the HVC and the HC, although with a different representational structure, and generalized across imagery and perception. However, different regional adaptation effects and inter-regional functional couplings were detected for faces and landmarks during imagery and perception. The left PPA showed opposite adaptation effects, with activity suppression following repeated observation of landmarks, but enhancement following repeated imagery of landmarks. Also, functional coupling between content-dependent brain areas of the HVC and HC changed as a function of task and content. These findings provide important information about the dynamic networks underlying imagery and perception in the HVC and shed some light upon the thin line between imagery and perception which has characterized the neuropsychological debates on mental imagery.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maddalena Boccia
- Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.,Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Alice Teghil
- Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.,PhD Program in Behavioral Neuroscience, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy.,Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy
| | - Liana Palermo
- Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.,Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy
| | - Laura Piccardi
- Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.,Department of Life, Health and Environmental Sciences, L'Aquila University, L'Aquila, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.,Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy
| | - Cecilia Guariglia
- Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.,Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy
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Sulpizio V, Boccia M, Guariglia C, Galati G. Neural Codes for One's Own Position and Direction in a Real-World "Vista" Environment. Front Hum Neurosci 2018; 12:167. [PMID: 29760655 PMCID: PMC5936771 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00167] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/15/2018] [Accepted: 04/11/2018] [Indexed: 01/28/2023] Open
Abstract
Humans, like animals, rely on an accurate knowledge of one’s spatial position and facing direction to keep orientated in the surrounding space. Although previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated that scene-selective regions (the parahippocampal place area or PPA, the occipital place area or OPA and the retrosplenial complex or RSC), and the hippocampus (HC) are implicated in coding position and facing direction within small-(room-sized) and large-scale navigational environments, little is known about how these regions represent these spatial quantities in a large open-field environment. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in humans to explore the neural codes of these navigationally-relevant information while participants viewed images which varied for position and facing direction within a familiar, real-world circular square. We observed neural adaptation for repeated directions in the HC, even if no navigational task was required. Further, we found that the amount of knowledge of the environment interacts with the PPA selectivity in encoding positions: individuals who needed more time to memorize positions in the square during a preliminary training task showed less neural attenuation in this scene-selective region. We also observed adaptation effects, which reflect the real distances between consecutive positions, in scene-selective regions but not in the HC. When examining the multi-voxel patterns of activity we observed that scene-responsive regions and the HC encoded both spatial information and that the RSC classification accuracy for positions was higher in individuals scoring higher to a self-reported questionnaire of spatial abilities. Our findings provide new insight into how the human brain represents a real, large-scale “vista” space, demonstrating the presence of neural codes for position and direction in both scene-selective and hippocampal regions, and revealing the existence, in the former regions, of a map-like spatial representation reflecting real-world distance between consecutive positions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy.,Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation Unit, Fondazione Santa Lucia (IRCCS), Rome, Italy
| | - Maddalena Boccia
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy.,Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation Unit, Fondazione Santa Lucia (IRCCS), Rome, Italy
| | - Cecilia Guariglia
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy.,Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation Unit, Fondazione Santa Lucia (IRCCS), Rome, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy.,Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation Unit, Fondazione Santa Lucia (IRCCS), Rome, Italy
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Boccia M, Sulpizio V, Palermo L, Piccardi L, Guariglia C, Galati G. I can see where you would be: Patterns of fMRI activity reveal imagined landmarks. Neuroimage 2017; 144:174-182. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.08.034] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/17/2016] [Revised: 07/13/2016] [Accepted: 08/18/2016] [Indexed: 10/21/2022] Open
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Sulpizio V, Boccia M, Guariglia C, Galati G. Implicit coding of location and direction in a familiar, real-world "vista" space. Behav Brain Res 2016; 319:16-24. [PMID: 27840248 DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2016.10.052] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/19/2016] [Revised: 10/27/2016] [Accepted: 10/31/2016] [Indexed: 02/02/2023]
Abstract
Keeping oriented in the surrounding space requires an accurate representation of one's spatial position and facing direction. Although previous studies provided evidence of specific spatial codes for position and direction within room-sized and large-scale navigational environments, little is known about the mechanisms by which these spatial quantities are represented in a real small-scale environment. Here, we used two spatial tasks requiring participants to encode their own position and facing direction on a series of pictures taken from a familiar circular square. Crucially, directions and positions were incidentally manipulated, so that when participants were required to encode their current position in the square, the perceived direction across consecutive trials was the same, and vice versa. We found a behavioral advantage (priming effect: reduced reaction times and increased accuracy) for repeated directions and positions, even in the absence of any explicit demand to encode either of them. The advantage was higher for repeated directions, indicating that representation of one's own direction is more automatic than representation of one's own location. Furthermore, priming effects were partially mediated by gender: females (but not males) showed a stronger priming effect for repeated directions than for repeated positions. Finally, although priming effects were not linearly related to the physical distances between consecutive positions and directions, they revealed a rough preservation of real-world distance relationships.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy; Unit of Motor and Cognitive Rehabilitation, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy.
| | - Maddalena Boccia
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy; Unit of Motor and Cognitive Rehabilitation, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
| | - Cecilia Guariglia
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy; Unit of Motor and Cognitive Rehabilitation, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy; Unit of Motor and Cognitive Rehabilitation, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
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25
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Indovina I, Maffei V, Mazzarella E, Sulpizio V, Galati G, Lacquaniti F. Path integration in 3D from visual motion cues: A human fMRI study. Neuroimage 2016; 142:512-521. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.07.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/29/2016] [Revised: 06/23/2016] [Accepted: 07/04/2016] [Indexed: 01/30/2023] Open
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26
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Sulpizio V, Boccia M, Guariglia C, Galati G. Functional connectivity between posterior hippocampus and retrosplenial complex predicts individual differences in navigational ability. Hippocampus 2016; 26:841-7. [DOI: 10.1002/hipo.22592] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 03/10/2016] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Psychology; Sapienza University; Rome Italy
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology; IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia; Rome Italy
| | - Maddalena Boccia
- Department of Psychology; Sapienza University; Rome Italy
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology; IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia; Rome Italy
| | - Cecilia Guariglia
- Department of Psychology; Sapienza University; Rome Italy
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology; IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia; Rome Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Psychology; Sapienza University; Rome Italy
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology; IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia; Rome Italy
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27
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Spitoni GF, Pireddu G, Galati G, Sulpizio V, Paolucci S, Pizzamiglio L. Caloric Vestibular Stimulation Reduces Pain and Somatoparaphrenia in a Severe Chronic Central Post-Stroke Pain Patient: A Case Study. PLoS One 2016; 11:e0151213. [PMID: 27028404 PMCID: PMC4814090 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0151213] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2015] [Accepted: 02/23/2016] [Indexed: 02/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Central post-stroke pain is a neuropathic syndrome characterized by intolerable contralesional pain and, in rare cases, somatic delusions. To date, there is limited evidence for the effective treatments of this disease. Here we used caloric vestibular stimulation to reduce pain and somatoparaphrenia in a 57-year-old woman suffering from central post-stroke pain. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess the neurological effects of this treatment. Following vestibular stimulation we observed impressive improvements in motor skills, pain, and somatic delusions. In the functional connectivity study before the vestibular stimulation, we observed differences in the patient's left thalamus functional connectivity, with respect to the thalamus connectivity of a control group (N = 20), in the bilateral cingulate cortex and left insula. After the caloric stimulation, the left thalamus functional connectivity with these regions, which are known to be involved in the cortical response to pain, disappeared as in the control group. The beneficial use of vestibular stimulation in the reduction of pain and somatic delusion in a CPSP patient is now documented by behavioral and imaging data. This evidence can be applied to theoretical models of pain and body delusions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Grazia Fernanda Spitoni
- Department of Psychology–Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
- * E-mail:
| | - Giorgio Pireddu
- Department of Psychology–Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Psychology–Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Psychology–Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
| | - Stefano Paolucci
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
| | - Luigi Pizzamiglio
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
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Sulpizio V, Committeri G, Lambrey S, Berthoz A, Galati G. Role of the human retrosplenial cortex/parieto-occipital sulcus in perspective priming. Neuroimage 2015; 125:108-119. [PMID: 26484830 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.10.040] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/04/2015] [Accepted: 10/15/2015] [Indexed: 10/22/2022] Open
Abstract
The ability to imagine the world from a different viewpoint is a fundamental competence for spatial reorientation and for imagining what another individual sees in the environment. Here, we investigated the neural bases of such an ability using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Healthy participants detected target displacements across consecutive views of a familiar virtual room, either from the perspective of an avatar (primed condition) or in the absence of such a prime (unprimed condition). In the primed condition, the perspective at test always corresponded to the avatar's perspective, while in the unprimed condition it was randomly chosen as 0, 45 or 135deg of viewpoint rotation. We observed a behavioral advantage in performing a perspective transformation during the primed condition as compared to an equivalent amount of unprimed perspective change. Although many cortical regions (dorsal parietal, parieto-temporo-occipital junction, precuneus and retrosplenial cortex/parieto-occipital sulcus or RSC/POS) were involved in encoding and retrieving target location from different perspectives and were modulated by the amount of viewpoint rotation, the RSC/POS was the only area showing decreased activity in the primed as compared to the unprimed condition, suggesting that this region anticipates the upcoming perspective change. The retrosplenial cortex/parieto-occipital sulcus appears to play a special role in the allocentric coding of heading directions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Psychology, Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy; Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS, Roma, Italy.
| | - Giorgia Committeri
- Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, and ITAB, Institute for Advanced Biomedical Technologies, University G. d'Annunzio, Chieti, Italy
| | - Simon Lambrey
- LPPA, Collège de France-CNRS, Paris, France; Service de Psychiatrie Adulte, Groupe Hospitalier Pitié-Salpêtrière, Paris, France
| | | | - Gaspare Galati
- Department of Psychology, Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy; Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS, Roma, Italy
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Bisby JA, King JA, Sulpizio V, Degeilh F, Valerie Curran H, Burgess N. Extinction learning is slower, weaker and less context specific after alcohol. Neurobiol Learn Mem 2015; 125:55-62. [PMID: 26234587 PMCID: PMC4655873 DOI: 10.1016/j.nlm.2015.07.014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/14/2015] [Accepted: 07/24/2015] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Alcohol is frequently involved in psychological trauma and often used by individuals to reduce fear and anxiety. We examined the effects of alcohol on fear acquisition and extinction within a virtual environment. Healthy volunteers were administered alcohol (0.4 g/kg) or placebo and underwent acquisition and extinction from different viewpoints of a virtual courtyard, in which the conditioned stimulus, paired with a mild electric shock, was centrally located. Participants returned the following day to test fear recall from both viewpoints of the courtyard. Skin conductance responses were recorded as an index of conditioned fear. Successful fear acquisition under alcohol contrasted with impaired extinction learning evidenced by persistent conditioned responses (Experiment 1). Participants’ impairments in extinction under alcohol correlated with impairments in remembering object-locations in the courtyard seen from one viewpoint when tested from the other viewpoint. Alcohol-induced extinction impairments were overcome by increasing the number of extinction trials (Experiment 2). However, a test of fear recall the next day showed persistent fear in the alcohol group across both viewpoints. Thus, alcohol impaired extinction rather than acquisition of fear, suggesting that extinction is more dependent than acquisition on alcohol-sensitive representations of spatial context. Overall, extinction learning under alcohol was slower, weaker and less context-specific, resulting in persistent fear at test that generalized to the extinction viewpoint. The selective effect on extinction suggests an effect of alcohol on prefrontal involvement, while the reduced context-specificity implicates the hippocampus. These findings have important implications for the use of alcohol by individuals with clinical anxiety disorders.
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Affiliation(s)
- James A Bisby
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK; Institute of Neurology, University College London, Queen Square, London, WC1 3BG, UK.
| | - John A King
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK; Clinical, Education and Health Psychology, University College London, London, UK
| | - Valentina Sulpizio
- Department of Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS, Roma, Italy
| | - Fanny Degeilh
- Inserm-EPHE-UCBN, Unité U1077, Boulevard Becquerel, 14000 Caen, France
| | - H Valerie Curran
- Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, University College London, London, UK; Clinical, Education and Health Psychology, University College London, London, UK
| | - Neil Burgess
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK; Institute of Neurology, University College London, Queen Square, London, WC1 3BG, UK.
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30
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Boccia M, Piccardi L, Palermo L, Nemmi F, Sulpizio V, Galati G, Guariglia C. A penny for your thoughts! patterns of fMRI activity reveal the content and the spatial topography of visual mental images. Hum Brain Mapp 2014; 36:945-58. [PMID: 25359694 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.22678] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/25/2014] [Revised: 09/10/2014] [Accepted: 10/22/2014] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
Visual mental imagery is a complex process that may be influenced by the content of mental images. Neuropsychological evidence from patients with hemineglect suggests that in the imagery domain environments and objects may be represented separately and may be selectively affected by brain lesions. In the present study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess the possibility of neural segregation among mental images depicting parts of an object, of an environment (imagined from a first-person perspective), and of a geographical map, using both a mass univariate and a multivariate approach. Data show that different brain areas are involved in different types of mental images. Imagining an environment relies mainly on regions known to be involved in navigational skills, such as the retrosplenial complex and parahippocampal gyrus, whereas imagining a geographical map mainly requires activation of the left angular gyrus, known to be involved in the representation of categorical relations. Imagining a familiar object mainly requires activation of parietal areas involved in visual space analysis in both the imagery and the perceptual domain. We also found that the pattern of activity in most of these areas specifically codes for the spatial arrangement of the parts of the mental image. Our results clearly demonstrate a functional neural segregation for different contents of mental images and suggest that visuospatial information is coded by different patterns of activity in brain areas involved in visual mental imagery.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maddalena Boccia
- Department of Psychology, "Sapienza" University of Rome, Rome, Italy; Neuropsychology Unit, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia of Rome, Rome, Italy
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31
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Sulpizio V, Committeri G, Galati G. Distributed cognitive maps reflecting real distances between places and views in the human brain. Front Hum Neurosci 2014; 8:716. [PMID: 25309392 PMCID: PMC4160952 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00716] [Citation(s) in RCA: 41] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/11/2014] [Accepted: 08/26/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
KEEPING ORIENTED IN THE ENVIRONMENT IS A MULTIFACETED ABILITY THAT REQUIRES KNOWLEDGE OF AT LEAST THREE PIECES OF INFORMATION: one's own location ("place") and orientation ("heading") within the environment, and which location in the environment one is looking at ("view"). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in humans to examine the neural signatures of these information. Participants were scanned while viewing snapshots which varied for place, view and heading within a virtual room. We observed adaptation effects, proportional to the physical distances between consecutive places and views, in scene-responsive (retrosplenial complex and parahippocampal gyrus), fronto-parietal and lateral occipital regions. Multivoxel pattern classification of signals in scene-responsive regions and in the hippocampus allowed supra-chance decoding of place, view and heading, and revealed the existence of map-like representations, where places and views closer in physical space entailed activity patterns more similar in neural representational space. The pattern of hippocampal activity reflected both view- and place-based distances, the pattern of parahippocampal activity preferentially discriminated between views, and the pattern of retrosplenial activity combined place and view information, while the fronto-parietal cortex only showed transient effects of changes in place, view, and heading. Our findings provide evidence for the presence of map-like spatial representations which reflect metric distances in terms of both one's own and landmark locations.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Giorgia Committeri
- Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, University G. d'Annunzio, and ITAB, Institute for Advanced Biomedical Technologies, G. d'Annunzio Foundation Chieti, Italy
| | - Gaspare Galati
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS Roma, Italy ; Department of Psychology, Sapienza University Rome, Italy
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Montefinese M, Sulpizio V, Galati G, Committeri G. Age-related effects on spatial memory across viewpoint changes relative to different reference frames. Psychol Res 2014; 79:687-97. [PMID: 25037856 DOI: 10.1007/s00426-014-0598-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2013] [Accepted: 07/07/2014] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Remembering object positions across different views is a fundamental competence for acting and moving appropriately in a large-scale space. Behavioural and neurological changes in elderly subjects suggest that the spatial representations of the environment might decline compared to young participants. However, no data are available on the use of different reference frames within topographical space in aging. Here we investigated the use of allocentric and egocentric frames in aging, by asking young and older participants to encode the location of a target in a virtual room relative either to stable features of the room (allocentric environment-based frame), or to an unstable objects set (allocentric objects-based frame), or to the viewer's viewpoint (egocentric frame). After a viewpoint change of 0° (absent), 45° (small) or 135° (large), participants judged whether the target was in the same spatial position as before relative to one of the three frames. Results revealed a different susceptibility to viewpoint changes in older than young participants. Importantly, we detected a worst performance, in terms of reaction times, for older than young participants in the allocentric frames. The deficit was more marked for the environment-based frame, for which a lower sensitivity was revealed as well as a worst performance even when no viewpoint change occurred. Our data provide new evidence of a greater vulnerability of the allocentric, in particular environment-based, spatial coding with aging, in line with the retrogenesis theory according to which cognitive changes in aging reverse the sequence of acquisition in mental development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria Montefinese
- Laboratory of Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, University G. d'Annunzio, Via dei Vestini 31, 66100, Chieti, Italy,
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Steinisch M, Sulpizio V, Iorio AA, Di Naccio A, Haueisen J, Committeri G, Comani S. A virtual environment for egocentric and allocentric mental transformations: a study on a nonclinical population of adults with distinct levels of schizotypy. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2012; 56:291-9. [PMID: 21988160 DOI: 10.1515/bmt.2011.107] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
We benefited from the flexibility provided by virtual reality to enhance a classical paradigm on array and self mental rotations and related questions on a set of items. We used this paradigm to investigate how the Level of Schizotypy in nonclinical subjects might influence their behavior in egocentric and allocentric mental transformations. Three elements of novelty were introduced: (i) we separated the phases of mental transformation (Imagined Rotation Phase) and task performance (Task Phase), (ii) we measured the time required for Imagined Rotation Phase and Task Phase separately, and (iii) we cued self-rotations with a virtual human being (self-avatar) or an inanimate object (self-chair). Twenty-four nonclinical participants were categorized in low- and high-schizotypal subjects (Low-S, High-S). A mixed-design analysis of variance showed that High-S were significantly faster than Low-S during the Imagined Rotation Phase (array and self-chair rotations) and during the Task Phase (self-chair). High-S were also faster in the self-chair than in the self-avatar rotation, supporting the existence of a dissociation between perspective changing and perspective taking in High-S. In line with the literature, we found that participant performances decreased with increasing angular difference between the initial and the imagined perspective.
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Affiliation(s)
- Martin Steinisch
- BIND--Behavioral Imaging and Neural Dynamics Center, University "G. d'Annunzio", Chieti, Italy.
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