Neural correlate of the projection of mental states on the not-structured visual stimuli

Luciani, Massimiliano; Cecchini, Marco; Altavilla, Daniela; Palumbo, Letizia; Aceto, Paola; Ruggeri, Giuseppe; Vecchio, Fabrizio; Lai, Carlo

doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2014.05.008

Cited by 21 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…On the other hand, however, if the input is ambiguous or degraded, the PFC may provide topdown estimations to compensate for less informative sensory inputs and thus facilitating the recognition of objects (Cho-Hisamoto et al, 2015). Interestingly, a very similar interaction between the prefrontal-temporal (top-down) and temporaloccipital (bottom-up) networks has been observed during mental projection (Luciani et al, 2014), i.e., subjective attribution of meaning to ill-structured stimuli or situations, suggesting that predictive coding may underpin this phenomenon. In summary, the observed improvement in ROR response fluency by anodal tDCS may stem from an increased excitability of the PFC, or the prefrontal-temporal brain network, that generates likely estimations of ambiguous stimuli, which in turn enhances the recognition of meaningful patterns.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Transforming sensory inputs into meaningful patterns is further supported by the semantic system, as indicated by the activation of the left-hemispheric language network during object recognition (Gabrieli et al, 1998;Chouinard et al, 2009;Ralph et al, 2017). Notably, the processing of ill-structured or noisy visual patterns further increases the activation of this network, particularly in the left inferior frontal cortex (Liu et al, 2010(Liu et al, , 2014Luciani et al, 2014). Interestingly, such activity increase in the PFC has also been reported during semantic memory retrieval, especially when the stimuli provide insufficient retrieval cues (Badre and Wagner, 2002) or when multiple instances have to be retrieved in rapid succession (Ghanavati et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…ROR involves the search and detection of visual features, mental imagery, retrieval of knowledge, and (paced) formulation of meaningful interpretations of ambiguous visual stimuli (inkblots). In addition to the temporal-occipital visual pathways, ROR and similar tasks recruit the PFC (Aziz-Zadeh et al, 2013;Luciani et al, 2014;Giromini et al, 2017), suggesting that topdown information mediates the interpretation of ambiguous visual stimuli. Based on these findings, we predicted that excitatory anodal tDCS over the left lateral PFC would facilitate the prefrontal computations that augment ambiguous object processing, which would result in an increased number of patterns recognized in the ROR task.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Left Prefrontal Cortex Supports the Recognition of Meaningful Patterns in Ambiguous Stimuli

et al. 2020

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Processing of ambiguous visual stimuli has been associated with an increased activation of the left lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) in neuroimaging studies. Nevertheless, the functional role of prefrontal activity in this process is not fully understood. In this experiment we asked participants to evaluate ambiguous inkblots from the Rorschach test, while stimulating the left lateral PFC using excitatory anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). In addition, visual insight ability was assessed as a control measure requiring visual and conceptual restructuring and convergent thinking rather than divergent idea generation employed to interpret the equivocal Rorschach inkblots. Using a randomized double-blind design, we demonstrated that anodal tDCS increased the number of meaningful patterns recognized in the inkblots but had no significant effect on visual insight. These findings support the role of left lateral PFC in the processing of ambiguous visual information and object recognition. More generally, we discuss that the PFC may be involved in the mechanisms supporting the activation of stored visual and semantic representations in order to compensate for less informative bottom-up inputs and thus facilitate flexible cognition and idea generation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Left Prefrontal Cortex Supports the Recognition of Meaningful Patterns in Ambiguous Stimuli

et al. 2020

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“…sLORETA (Pascual‐Marqui, ) was used with GeoSource (version 2.0; Electrical Geodesic, Inc., Eugene, OR), allowing us to inferentially determine a virtual map of the brain. Source location was derived from the probabilistic map of the MNI305 according to which gray matter volume was parcellated into 7‐mm voxels; each voxel served as a source location with three orthogonal orientation vectors (Cecchini, Aceto, Altavilla, Palumbo, & Lai ; Lai, Altavilla, Ronconi, & Aceto, ; Lai et al., ; Lancaster et al., ; Luciani et al., ). This resulted in a total of 2,447 source triplets, the anatomical labels for which we estimated using the Talairach Daemon software (Lancaster et al., ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurophysiological Correlates of Collective Trauma Recall in 2009 L'Aquila Earthquake Survivors

Massaro

Altavilla

Aceto

et al. 2018

Journal of Traumatic Stress

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In the present study, we aimed to explore neural correlates of survivors of the 2009 L'Aquila, Italy earthquake in response to being shown pictures featuring their own city before and after an earthquake as well as those of an unfamiliar city. Moreover, we explored the associations among psychological variables and brain responses to the pictures of L'Aquila after the earthquake. Our final sample (N = 30 adults) comprised 15 survivors (M age = 31.40 years, SD = 9.42) and 15 controls (M age = 30.53 years, SD = 10.01). Participants’ electroencephalographic (EEG) data were recorded during a visual task that included earthquake‐related stimuli. Participants were assessed for posttraumatic and dissociation symptoms and event‐related potential components, and low‐resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) were analyzed. Compared to the control group, source localization in survivors indicated a lower intensity of the amygdala, hippocampal, parahippocampal, and temporopolar areas in response to visual stimuli concerning the earthquake, p < .001 to p < .0001. Results indicated a reduced limbic activation in response to visual stimuli that evoked the recall of earthquake in survivors. This finding suggests that survivors likely adopted a distancing strategy toward stimuli that may have elicited an emotional activation related to collective trauma.

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“…Based on the probabilistic map, gray matter volume was parcellated into 7mm voxels; each voxel served as a source location with three orthogonal orientation vectors. This resulted in a total of 2,447 source triplets whose anatomical labels were estimated using a Talairach daemon (Massaro, Altavilla, Aceto, Pellicano, Lucarelli, Luciani et al, in press;Lai, Luciani, Di Giorgio, Fiorini, Yaya, Pellicano et al, 2018;Cecchini, Aceto, Altavilla, Palumbo & Lai, 2013;Cecchini, Iannoni, Pandolfo, Aceto & Lai, 2015;Lai, Altavilla, Ronconi & Aceto, 2016;Lancaster, Woldorff, Parsons, Liotti, Freitas, Rainey et al, 2000;Luciani, Cecchini, Altavilla, Palumbo, Aceto, Ruggeri et al, 2014).…”

Section: Source Analysis (S-loreta)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Violence in video game produces a lower activation of limbic and temporal areas in response to social inclusion images

Lai

Pellicano

Altavilla

et al. 2018

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

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Exposure to violence in video games has been associated with a desensitization toward violent content, a decrease of empathy, and prosocial behavior. Moreover, violent video games seem to be related to a reduction of neural activation in the circuits linked to social emotional processing. The purpose of the present study was to compare the neural response to social inclusion images after violent and nonviolent video game playing. Electroencephalographic data of the 32 participants were recorded during a visual task with three presentations (T0, T1, T2) of 60 stimuli (30 social inclusion vs. 30 neutral images). After the T0 presentation, the participants played with a video game (orientation or violent). After the T1 presentation, the participants played with the other video game (orientation or violent). The two types of video games were randomly displayed. Event-related potential (ERP) components and low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) were analyzed. The main findings showed a longer latency of the P2 component on occipito-temporal montage and a lower activation of the limbic and temporal areas in response to the social inclusion images post violent video game compared with the post orientation video game. The findings suggest a reduction of emotional engagement in social processing after playing violent video game.

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Neural correlate of the projection of mental states on the not-structured visual stimuli

Cited by 21 publications

References 32 publications

Left Prefrontal Cortex Supports the Recognition of Meaningful Patterns in Ambiguous Stimuli

Left Prefrontal Cortex Supports the Recognition of Meaningful Patterns in Ambiguous Stimuli

Neurophysiological Correlates of Collective Trauma Recall in 2009 L'Aquila Earthquake Survivors

Violence in video game produces a lower activation of limbic and temporal areas in response to social inclusion images

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