1,721,095 research outputs found
La valutazione del declino cognitivo nei senior workers: stato dell’arte ed indicazioni future.
No full textUna buona tenuta cognitiva è fondamentale nella vita di tutti i giorni e, rispetto al passato, l'età dei lavoratori è di molto aumentata, insieme alla probabilità di andare incontro a deterioramento cognitivo. Con il passare dell'età, infatti, si assiste a un calo delle capacità cognitive, ed in particolare di memoria, attenzione, flessibilità, nonché delle capacità di ragionamento, che riducono il livello di funzionamento dell'individuo. Con l'invecchiamento dei lavoratori si è palesata la necessità di una valutazione precoce del livello di funzionalità cognitiva in vista di interventi preventivi e riabilitativi in ambito aziendale. I test neuropsicologici di screening normalmente preposti a livello ambulatoriale ignorano i vari aspetti motivazionali ed esperienziali e quindi peccano di ecologicità in ambito occupazionale. Inoltre gli usuali test psicometrici non sembrano adeguati per una popolazione come quella degli older workers, poiché sono soggetti ad effetti soffitto in quanto non sufficientemente sensibili in caso di lievi modificazioni cognitive. Accade spesso, infatti, che i senior workers ricorrano a strategie compensative, facendo affidamento, durante il lavoro, all'esperienza maturata nel corso della carriera mascherando una ridotta performance cognitiva legata a un calo della produttività che non viene individuato da strumenti testistici tradizionali. Appare, quindi, evidente la necessità di test ad hoc in grado di mettere alla prova i lavoratori ad un livello massimo di funzionamento, insieme ad altre prove che diano indicazioni sul livello cognitivo 'pre-aging', in modo da fornire delle indicazioni più precise sull'eventuale comparsa di un declino cognitivo che incide sulla performance lavorativa. Con il presente intervento si intende rispondere a quesiti quali: è possibile reperire o creare degli strumenti testistici a basso costo mirati al mondo del lavoro? Chi dovrebbe essere (anche legalmente) autorizzato ad usarli? Quali sono gli aspetti etici legati all'uso degli strumenti testistici così com'è richiesto dalle aziende per la riselezione interna (spesso per sostituire i meno abili)
Psychophysiology of deception: Forensic applications.
No full textWhen we lie our brain arousal level is increased by the Autonomic Nervous System, which is also responsible for other body changes that can be easily detected in legal contests (by a lie detector). The problem with these physiological indexes is that they reflect an emotional perturbation, not the cognitive act of lying itself, therefore they cannot be always reliably used. Some recent electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies tried to investigate neural correlates underlying deception, accounting for the complexity of such a function, through the spatiotemporal analysis of neural activation while performing a task involving deception. Granting the insights given on neural activity associated with deceptive behavior, little attention has been paid so far to the effects on brain activity when lying involves affective information. The aim of this presentation is to sum up the more recent developments of psychophysiology in the detection of deception in its forensic applications and show the results of our ERP study (Proverbio et al., 2013) on untruthful behaviors answering to visually presented neutral and affective questions
Is three better than two? A study on EEG activity and imagination abilities in 2D vs 3D stimuli
No full textReal and virtual are often considered terms in reciprocal opposition, but the boundaries between the two are blurred. The main goal of our study consists in answering the question whether the presence of a third dimension (3D) is a fundamental step of the virtual toward the real world, and if it causes some difference in the neural activity of the spectator [8]. Also, the possibility to consider real what is virtual will be discussed [6, 7]
Electrocortical markers of lying
No full textLying, as a deplorable behavior, induces changes in the vegetative system because of the sense of guilt and the anxiety of being uncovered, and the current lie-detectors, as the polygraph, register these changes as cues of a deceptive behavior. Such modulations, however, aren't direct measures of deception per se, but products of emotions in general, that could also affect an innocent suspect, wrongly accused. But what happens in the brain? Is it possible to define the relationship between lies and emotions? The purpose of this study was thus to investigate the neural correlates of deceptive behavior in response to neutral and affective questions, created ad-hoc, through the analysis of the electrocortical indexes registered in healthy volunteers. ERPs were recorded from 128 sites. From ERP responses it was possible to notice, at anterior brain areas, a late modulation of the electrocortical activity during the lying versus the telling the truth condition, according to the affective valence of the stimuli. This finding is particularly relevant in that it confirms the ambiguity of data coming from studies related to peripheral indexes measures. An earlier peak was found over the prefrontal regions that distinguished between truthful and mendacious responses, irrespective of the affective context. This component would thus represent the neural marker of deception. A swLORETA linear inverse solution was computed on its amplitude. The results showed that a deceptive behavior is related to the activation of anterior brain areas reflecting an increasing need in higher-level cognitive functions, namely working memory, conflict monitoring, controlled- and task switching-processes, also suggested by behavioral responses
Electrocortical markers of lying: When truthful people are taken for mendacious
No full textThe capacity to deceive others is a complex, multicomponential and typically human cognitive ability, which requires higher-order cognitive functions and the ability to suppress truthful information. Nothwithstanding the polygraph is widely used in countries such as USA to detect deception, not much is known about the role of emotional processes (such as the fear of being considered guilty while being innocent) in affecting physiological responses used as lie indicators. The aim of this study was to investigate the time course and neural correlates of untruthful behaviour in response to visually presented neutral and affective questions through the analysis of electro-cortical potentials; the questions could also be inherently true or false and ERP were recorded from 128 scalp sites in 23 volunteers. Behavioural and ERP responses indicated that when one is lying there is an increased need for executive functions, namely working memory, inhibition and task switching processes. Deceptive responses elicited a more negative N400 over the prefrontal regions and a smaller late positivity (LP 550-750 ms) over the prefrontal and frontal areas. However, such a reduction in LP amplitude was elicited also by truthful affective responses, thus resulting in a lack of difference between mendacious and truthful responses to emotional questions. A swLORETA inverse solution was applied to the N400 component (300-400 ms) that indeed would represent the neural marker of deception (difference-wave: untruthful-truthful). The results showed the activation of the precentral gyrus (BA6), of the superior, medial, middle and inferior frontal gyrus (BA9, 11, 47), and of the anterior cingulate cortex during deceptive responding
Electrophysiological correlates of recognition memory for faces
No full textMost ERP studies on long-term memory retrieval show the potential power of ERP components in discriminating correctly identified old and new items: the well-known old-new effect. Recently, such discoveries have become very important in the field of forensic neuroscience, in which the memory contents of the accused is of fundamental interest. However, although these effects have been studied and validated in paradigms using old and new words, results for non-linguistic matter are still not univocal. Therefore, the present study used ERPs to explore long-term memory, and in particular recognition memory, in response to 300 Caucasian faces belonging to 30 characters, 15 women and 15 men, each presented in 10 different perspectives. 100 belonged to 10 famous Hollywood actors or showmen, 100 belonged to 10 characters familiarized during the week preceding the experimental session, and 100 to 10 unknown characters. ERPs were recorded from 128 scalp sites in volunteer students. ERP results showed that the memory recognition processes strongly affected brain activity over fronto-central sites, with increased negativity for new faces between 200 and 400 ms post-stimulus, possibly related to encoding processes of new material, and an increased positivity between 600 and 800 ms post-stimulus to old faces, with larger potentials for better-known faces
Hemodynamic (fNIRS) and EEG (N200) correlates of emotional inter-species interactions modulated by visual and auditory stimulation
No full textThe brain activity, considered in its hemodynamic (optical imaging: functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy, fNIRS) and electrophysiological components (event-related potentials, ERPs, N200) was monitored when subjects observed (visual stimulation, V) or observed and heard (visual + auditory stimulation, VU) situations which represented inter-species (human-animal) interactions, with an emotional positive (cooperative) or negative (uncooperative) content. In addition, the cortical lateralization effect (more left or right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, DLPFC) was explored. Both ERP and fNIRS showed significant effects due to emotional interactions which were discussed at light of cross-modal integration effects. The significance of inter-species effect for the emotional behavior was considered. In addition, hemodynamic and EEG consonant results and their value as integrated measures were discussed at light of valence effect
Effetti specie-specifici e specie-aspecifici in contesti ad elevato impatto emotivo ed empatico. Uno studio combinato fNIRS-EEG
No full textNegli ultimi anni numerose evidenze delle neuroscienze sociali hanno identificato i network neurali sottesi alle capacità di empatizzare con le emozioni altrui, cruciali per la costruzione di relazioni sociali, dirigendo così l’attenzione su contesti di interazione specie-specifiche (con propri simili). Tuttavia sempre più frequentemente gli esseri umani vivono situazioni sociali in presenza di relazioni specie-aspecifiche (con animali). Scopo del presente studio è quello di esplorare i meccanismi cerebrali, emodinamici (spettroscopia funzionale nel vicino infrarosso, fNIRS) ed elettrofisiologici (EEG), coinvolti nei processi di sintonizzazione emotiva nei confronti di persone che interagiscono non solo con propri simili, ma anche con animali.
È stato chiesto a 22 partecipanti di osservare degli script che ritraevano interazioni cooperative e conflittuali tra esseri umani (condizione uomo-uomo: UU), oppure tra umani e animali domestici (uomo-animale: UA). Durante la visione venivano misurate contemporaneamente le variazioni emodinamiche ed elettrofisiologiche della corteccia prefrontale dorsolaterale, implicata in processi di regolazione emotiva e di cognizione sociale.
I risultati delle analisi ANOVA per misure ripetute hanno mostrato che, sebbene le due categorie coinvolgano pattern elettrofisiologici simili in base alla valenza emotiva, i dati emodinamici hanno mostrato alcune specificità, con un aumento dei livelli di ossiemoglobina (O2Hb) per le relazioni UU in contesti conflittuali, e per gli stimoli UA in contesti cooperativi.
Sia le relazioni UU che UA sono associate ad un alto coinvolgimento emotivo che riguarda principalmente le relazioni intra-specie in condizioni conflittuali, ed inter-specie in condizioni cooperative. I risultati sono stati motivati e discussi tenendo in considerazione i meccanismi neurali alla base dei processi empatici e il loro significato funzionale relativo al contesto d’interazione
The cooperative social brain: EEG/fNIRS hyperscanning during a joint performance
No full textUnderstanding the brain dynamics during social interaction has become an important issue for neuroscience research, and brain-to-brain coupling has sought to overcome some limitations of previous approach based on single-person recording. In fact, such studies cannot assess the dynamics of two (or more) brains interacting together, nor reproduce ecological settings. In the present study the neural basis of inter-brain cooperation underlying the execution of joint-actions were explored by using a hyperscanning paradigm involving both Electroencephalographic (EEG: experiment 1) and functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS: experiment 2) coherence measures. Participants grouped in couples were asked to perform an attentional task in the form of a cooperative game. Synchronicity of the behavioral variables (Response Times, RTs, and Error Rates, ERs) was also considered during some steps of progressive social reinforcing conditions. In fact, during the task, subjects constantly received a feedback manipulated a priori to stress their good synchronizing abilities. Considering both EEG and fNIRS measures, the induced feedback affected both the cognitive performance and brain-to-brain coupling by increasing behavioral and brain synchronization when a positive reinforce was furnished to the participants. For what concerns EEG, high coherence effect was mainly observed when a positive reinforce was produced, but only for low frequency bands within the prefrontal left area, compared to the right one, thus underlining a left lateralization effect. Similarly, an increased brain activity over the prefrontal area was found for fNIRS measures in relation to the positive social feedback. Therefore, it is possible to hypothesize that the role of left PFC is significant induced by the positive reinforce, probably in relation to the perception of social efficacy in cooperative behavior. Finally, the cognitive and cortical coherence measures were shown to be correlated each other. These results underline the importance of simultaneously record brain dynamics in real-time interacting participants for studies on social cognition
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