Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Alyson Matheus de Carvalho Souza, Roberta Barrocas, Martin H. H. Fischer, Emanuel Arnaud, Korbinian Moeller, Cesar Renno-Costa
Summary: We developed an experimental setup using Virtual Reality and a low-cost tactile stimulator to study embodiment during finger-based numerical tasks. The results showed that our device can reliably deliver tactile stimulation to all fingers, providing a new method to study finger-based numerical representation and other high-level cognitive functions.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2023)
Review
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Riley Crandall, Ernur Karadogan
Summary: Haptic technology enhances learning experiences and is actively researched in educational methods, utilizing the powerful learning tool of touch that we have been employing since infancy.
APPLIED SCIENCES-BASEL
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Candace Walkington, Mitchell J. Nathan, Min Wang, Kelsey Schenck
Summary: Theories of grounded and embodied cognition explore the relationship between reasoning and body-based processes. This study investigates the cognitive relevance of directed actions to students' mathematical reasoning in geometry. The results suggest that cognitive relevance influences mathematical performance, particularly when students produce certain types of gestures during mathematical explanations.
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Wei Zheng, Xiaolu Wang
Summary: Empirical research has shown that bodily states can influence people's appreciation of humor. Little research has been done on the backward influence of amusement derived from humor processing on ongoing cognitive tasks. This study found that the positive affect derived from humor can enhance text comprehension by providing immediate feedback to the cognitive system.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Education & Educational Research
Panagiotis Kosmas, Panayiotis Zaphiris
Summary: This research investigates the use of embodied learning technologies in different learning environments to examine how it can enhance students' overall performance in real classroom settings. The results indicate that embodied learning can improve students' cognitive abilities, motor skills, and academic performance in language, as well as positively impact their emotional state and motivation to participate in the learning process.
EDUCATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Jamin Pelkey
Summary: The findings of cognitive linguistics emphasize the embodiment of linguistic constructions and meaning in human cognition and communication. A comprehensive overview of research in this area reveals the layers of bodily meaning involved, including schemas, metaphor, embodied grammar, and intersubjectivity. These findings have important implications for reuniting body and mind, understanding the role of meaning in language, and advancing scientific inquiry in various disciplines.
WILEY INTERDISCIPLINARY REVIEWS-COGNITIVE SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Samuel C. Bellini-Leite
Summary: Dual Process Theory is a popular theory for explaining bounded rationality in reasoning and decision-making tasks, proposing a distinction between fast and intuitive processes (Type 1) and slow and reflective processes (Type 2). The unity problem arises in explaining why these features form a unified whole. To address this, a hypothesis combining embodied predictive processing and symbolic classical cognition is proposed.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Humanities, Multidisciplinary
Heath E. Matheson, Yoed N. Kenett
Summary: A novel coding scheme was devised to analyze responses in a divergent thinking task, showing that individual differences in creativity influence the usage of different dimensions. The study provides new hypotheses about creative response generation and characterizes cognitive strategies in creative endeavors.
PSYCHOLOGY OF AESTHETICS CREATIVITY AND THE ARTS
(2021)
Article
Psychiatry
Christophe Gauld, Kristopher Nielsen, Manon Job, Hugo Bottemanne, Guillaume Dumas
Summary: Reliance on sole reductionism is difficult to support in clinical psychiatry, as there are multiple legitimate ways of understanding human functionality and disorder. Pluralistic frameworks and the enactive approach have been proposed to address this challenge. The study of the relationships between these frameworks can contribute to quality clinical practice.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHIATRY
(2022)
Article
History & Philosophy Of Science
Konrad Werner
Summary: This paper discusses the concept of cognitive confinement, a state where interactions between a subject and the environment result in an inability to gain information; it explains the mechanism of cognitive confinement through niche construction theory and the cognitive niche concept; and uses the rise of filter bubbles as a case study to illustrate the widespread phenomenon of cognitive confinement.
Article
Education & Educational Research
Magdalena Kersting, Tamer G. Amin, Elias Euler, Bor Gregorcic, Jesper Haglund, Liv Kondrup Hardahl, Rolf Steier
Summary: Science education researchers often overlook the crucial role of the body in meaning-making processes, and there exist theoretical and methodological differences within research on embodiment in science education. This paper aims to explore these differences and convergences through a dialogue between three fictitious personas, in order to better position the role of the body in science education research and unify terminology across different research traditions, further exploring the implications of embodiment.
SCIENCE & EDUCATION
(2023)
Article
Geriatrics & Gerontology
Hiroyuki Muto, Maki Suzuki, Kaoru Sekiyama
Summary: This study examines the changes in implicit motor imagery during advanced aging and their associations with physical motor deficits. The results show that older adults have lower performance in motor imagery compared to young adults, with stronger biomechanical constraint effects on hand and foot rotation. Moreover, the foot biomechanical constraint effect increases during late adulthood and declines in hand and foot motor imagery occur earlier than declines in visual imagery.
FRONTIERS IN AGING NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Suesan MacRae, Brian Duffels, Annie Duchesne, Paul D. Siakaluk, Heath E. Matheson
Summary: This study investigates how sensorimotor information constitutes GOD-related concepts and how religiosity modulates this grounding. The results demonstrate that manipulating sensorimotor information can facilitate the categorization of abstract concepts, with kneeling posture and religiosity significantly impacting the speed of categorization.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Enrico Petracca
Summary: The article discusses how views of embodied cognition can inform new approaches to rationality, ranging from moderate to radical perspectives. It compares embodied bounded rationality to Simon's bounded rationality, and introduces labels like embodied rationality, body rationality, and extended rationality to explore different levels of embodiment in influencing research on rationality.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Biology
Guy O. Dove
Summary: There is increasing interest in how language enhances embodied cognition, with growing evidence suggesting its contribution to semantic memory, especially for abstract concepts. This essay presents a novel account of the cognitive role of language in concepts, highlighting its embodied nature and departure from traditional accounts within a flexible, multimodal, and multilevel view of our conceptual system.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Cinzia Cecchetto, Marilena Aiello, Claudio Gentili, Silvio Ionta, Sofia Adelaide Osimo
Summary: During the lockdown in Italy due to COVID-19, emotional and binge eating were influenced by factors like anxiety, depression, quality of personal relationships, and stress. Higher alexithymia scores were related to increased emotional eating, while higher BMI scores were associated with both increased emotional eating and binge eating. From Phase 1 to Phase 2, there was a decrease in binge and emotional eating behaviors.
Article
Neurosciences
S. A. Osimo, L. Piretti, S. Ionta, R. Rumiati, M. Aiello
Summary: Studies have shown that individuals with higher BMI exhibit slower subliminal processing of food images and lack specific inhibition towards food stimuli, which is associated with morphological alterations in key brain regions related to awareness and reward. Additionally, differences in gray matter density and resting-state connectivity patterns in reward brain regions are linked to variability in visual processing and inhibition performances in individuals, regardless of BMI.
Article
Neurosciences
Gustavo S. P. Pamplona, Julio A. D. Salgado, Philipp Staempfli, Erich Seifritz, Roger Gassert, Silvio Ionta
Summary: Fundamental human feelings such as body ownership and vicariousness are based on multisensory integration, with behavioral links between the two demonstrated. This study revealed the neural effects of altered body ownership on vicarious somatosensation, highlighting the importance of temporal evolution of neural responses and extending the impact of body-related processing to other psychological domains.
Review
Neurosciences
Silvio Ionta
Summary: Vision is the main gateway for environmental input to the human brain, with strong connections to motor skills, cognition, and social aspects of human life. Development of visual abilities is crucial in both health and disease, impacting prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation.
FRONTIERS IN HUMAN NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Valentina Moro, Michela Corbella, Silvio Ionta, Federico Ferrari, Michele Scandola
Summary: Paraplegia following SCI affects mental and peripersonal space representation, with physical rehabilitation and cognitive training showing short-term improvements. However, long-term effects vary, with slower neuroplastic recovery in body representation and short-lived benefits in space representation. These results suggest plasticity in body and space representations after lesions, offering new perspectives in rehabilitation.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH
(2021)
Review
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Rola Farah, Silvio Ionta, Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus
Summary: Dyslexia is a neurobiological learning disability in the reading domain, leading to difficulties in academia and cognitive and emotional challenges for individuals. Executive functions play a crucial role in language and reading acquisition, showing abnormalities in individuals with dyslexia. Adding an EF assessment to neuropsychological testing is recommended for early intervention, and EF training should be considered for comprehensive outcomes.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2021)
Editorial Material
Neurosciences
Jane E. Aspell, Els Ortibus, Silvio Ionta
FRONTIERS IN HUMAN NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Borja Rodriguez-Herreros, Julia L. Amengual, Jimena Lucrecia Vazquez-Anguiano, Silvio Ionta, Carlo Miniussi, Toni Cunillera
Summary: Response inhibition is a fundamental brain function that incorporates both proactive and reactive processes. This study investigated the neural correlates of inhibitory control in a task involving error correction. The results suggest that proactive inhibitory control is not solely driven by response competition but also involves active top-down inhibitory processes.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Viviana Rojo Martinez, Yasmine Giovanola, Silvio Ionta
Summary: In the pre-Covid days, daily actions involving physical contact with others, such as hand shaking or cheek kissing, were common. However, the nature of this physical contact differed between touching inanimate objects and touching another person. The present study investigated how tactile conditions influenced mental representations of the body during a mental rotation task. The results showed that only mental rotation of hand images was affected by varying tactile conditions, suggesting that the nature of hand-related tactile input influences local (hand) rather than global (body) mental representations of the body.
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Gustavo Pamplona, Quentin Gruaz, Ken Mauron, Silvio Ionta
Summary: The study investigates the effects of targeted manipulations of visibility on the subjective and objective aspects of illusory body ownership. The findings suggest that the interaction between rubber hand's visibility and illusory ownership is sensitive to specific subjective ratings but not to objective measurements. The study highlights how relatively abrupt changes in visibility can differentially impact subjective versus objective components of body ownership.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Gustavo S. P. Pamplona, Martina Hardmeier, Sofian Younes, Isabelle Goy, Eleonora Fornari, Silvio Ionta
Summary: The nature of sensory input influences how humans process body-related information mentally. This study used fMRI to analyze the neural activity of participants who performed mental rotation tasks using visual and haptic stimuli. The results showed that the type of sensory input affected the brain activation patterns during body-related mental processing, with visual input activating parieto-occipital areas and haptic input activating the sensorimotor network. Additionally, the speed of mental rotation was associated with different brain activations, suggesting that distinct sensorimotor dynamics are utilized depending on the available sensory input.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Robert E. Langner, Frank J. Scharnowski, Silvio Ionta, Carlos G. Salmon, Brian G. Piper, Gustavo S. P. G. Pamplona
Summary: Different aspects of attention can be assessed through psychological tests, and the Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) software provides a wide range of attentional assessments. However, the reliability and validity of specific computerized attention tasks vary. Response time scores are reliable across tasks, but accuracy, variability, and deterioration over time scores are not. Stability and practice effects are observed across different tasks, and several task scores show convergent and discriminant validity. The results provide necessary information for designing and interpreting studies involving attention assessments.
Review
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Matteo Guidetti, Stefano Giannoni-Luza, Tommaso Bocci, Kevin Pacheco-Barrios, Anna Maria Bianchi, Marta Parazzini, Silvio Ionta, Roberta Ferrucci, Natale Vincenzo Maiorana, Federico Verde, Nicola Ticozzi, Vincenzo Silani, Alberto Priori
Summary: Clinical findings suggest that transcutaneous spinal direct current stimulation (tsDCS) can modulate ascending sensitive, descending corticospinal, and segmental pathways in the spinal cord (SC). Realistic computational models based on MRI can predict the interaction between tsDCS-induced electric fields and anatomy. Understanding the electric field distribution in the spinal cord and its relation to clinical findings is important for optimizing tsDCS protocols.
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Yasmine Giovaola, Viviana Rojo Martinez, Silvio Ionta
Summary: The mental representations of the body rely on current perceptions and prioritize reliable sensory inputs while downweighting less reliable ones. This study investigates the effect of decreased visual input on the relevance of somatosensation in mentally representing the body. The findings suggest a relative shift from a pictorial representation of the body (body image) to a somatosensory one (body schema) when visual input is degraded.
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Sofia Adelaide Osimo, Marilena Aiello, Claudio Gentili, Silvio Ionta, Cinzia Cecchetto
Summary: Lockdown measures can affect mental health, it is important to identify psychological characteristics making individuals more vulnerable. Emotional response during lockdown is related to emotional stability and resilience.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2021)
