Task-related modulation of motor response to emotional bodies: A TMS motor-evoked potential study

Exposure to emotional body postures during perceptual decision-making tasks has been linked to transient suppression of motor reactivity, supporting the monitoring of emotionally relevant information. However, it remains unclear whether this effect occurs implicitly, i.e., when emotional information is irrelevant to the task. To investigate this issue, we used single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to assess motor excitability while healthy participants were asked to categorize pictures of body expressions as emotional or neutral (emotion recognition task) or as belonging to a male or a female actor (gender recognition task) while receiving TMS over the motor cortex at 100 and 125 ms after picture onset. Results demonstrated that motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) were reduced for emotional body postures relative to neutral postures during the emotion recognition task. Conversely, MEPs increased for emotional body postures relative to neutral postures during the gender recognition task. These findings indicate that motor inhibition, contingent upon observing emotional body postures, is selectively associated with actively monitoring emotional features. In contrast, observing emotional body postures prompts motor facilitation when task-relevant features are non-emotional. These findings contribute to embodied cognition models that link emotion perception and action tendencies.

The embodied typist: Bimanual actions are modulated by words' implied motility and number of evoked limbs

The planning and execution of manual actions can be influenced by concomitant processing of manual action verbs. However, this phenomenon manifests in varied ways throughout the literature, ranging from facilitation to interference effects. Suggestively, stimuli across studies vary randomly in two potentially relevant variables: verb motility and effector quantity (i.e., the amount of movement and the number of hands implied by the word, respectively). Here we examine the role of these factors during keyboard typing, a strategic bimanual task validated in previous works. Forty-one participants read and typed high and low motility items from four categories: bimanual, unimanual, and non-manual action verbs, as well as minimally motoric verbs. Motor planning and execution were captured by first-letter lag (the lapse between word presentation and first keystroke) and whole-word lag (the lapse between the first and last keystroke). We found that verb motility modulated action planning and execution, both stages being delayed by high (relative to low) motility verbs. Effector quantity also influenced both stages, which were facilitated by bimanual verbs relative to unimanual verbs and non-manual verbs (this effect being confined to high motility items during action execution). Accordingly, motor-language coupling effects seem sensitive to words' implied motility and number of evoked limbs. These findings refine our understanding of how semantics influences bodily movement.

Disturbing the activity of the primary motor cortex by means of transcranial magnetic stimulation affects long term memory of sentences referred to manipulable objects

Introduction

Previous studies on embodied meaning suggest that simulations in the motor cortex play a crucial role in the processing of action sentences. However, there is little evidence that embodied meaning have functional impact beyond working memory. This study examines how the neuromodulation of the motor cortex (M1) could affect the processing of action-related language, measuring participants' performance in a long-term memory task.

Method

Participants were submitted to two sessions in separate days, one with low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and the other with sham rTMS. The pulses were delivered for 15 minutes over M1 or over V1, used as a control area. After each stimulation or sham period, the participants were asked to memorize a list of simple sentences, with a manual action verb or an attentional verb, followed in both cases by a noun referred to a manipulable object (e.g., to hang a cane vs. to observe a cane). Finally, they received the verbs as cues with instructions to recall the nouns.

Results

The results showed that low frequency rTMS on M1, compared to sham stimulation, significantly improved the performance in the memory task, for both types of sentences. No change in performance was found after the rTMS stimulation of V1.

Discussion

These results confirm that the perturbation on the motor system, affect the memory of manipulable object names in the context of sentences, providing further evidence of the role played by the sensorimotor system in the encoding and recall of concrete sentences of action.

You are fired! Exclusion words induce cortico-spinal modulations associated with vicarious pain

Self- and vicarious experience of physical pain induces inhibition of the motor cortex (M1). Experience of social rejections recruits the same neural network as physical pain, however, whether social pain modulates M1 corticospinal excitability remains unclear. This study examines for the first time whether social exclusion words, rather than simulated social exclusion tasks, modulate embodied sensorimotor networks during vicarious experience of other's pain. Participants observed visual sequences of painful and functional events ending with a superimposed word with either social exclusion, social inclusion, or nonsocial meaning. Motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) to single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the left M1 were recorded at 400 or 550 ms from word onset. MEPs tended to inhibit during observation of pain, relative to functional events. Moreover, MEPs recorded at 400 ms from word onset, during pain movies, decreased following the presentation of exclusion, relative to inclusion/neutral words. The magnitude of these two modulations marginally correlated with participants' interindividual differences in personal distress and self-esteem. These findings provide evidence of vicarious responding to others' pain in the M1 corticospinal system and enhancement of such vicarious response in the earlier phases of semantic processing of exclusion words - supporting activation of social pain embodied representations.

ERP evidence for emotion-specific congruency effects between sentences and new words with disgust and sadness connotations

Introduction

The present study investigated how new words with acquired connotations of disgust and sadness, both negatively valenced but distinctive emotions, modulate the brain dynamics in the context of emotional sentences.

Methods

Participants completed a learning session in which pseudowords were repeatedly paired with faces expressing disgust and sadness. An event-related potential (ERP) session followed the next day, in which participants received the learned pseudowords (herein, new words) combined with sentences and were asked to make emotional congruency judgment.

Results

Sad new words elicited larger negative waveform than disgusting new words in the 146-228 ms time window, and emotionally congruent trials showed larger positive waveform than emotionally incongruent trials in the 304-462 ms time window. Moreover, the source localization in the latter suggested that congruent trials elicited larger current densities than incongruent trials in a number of emotion-related brain structures (e.g., the orbitofrontal cortex and cingulate gyrus) and language-related brain structures (e.g., the temporal lobe and the lingual gyrus).

Discussion

These results suggested that faces are an effective source for the acquisition of words' emotional connotations, and such acquired connotations can generate semantic and emotional congruency effects in sentential contexts.

The negation-induced forgetting effect remains even after reducing associative interference

Recent research has provided evidence that negation processing recruits the neural network of response inhibition (de Vega et al., 2016). Furthermore, inhibition mechanisms also play a role in human memory. In two experiments, we aimed to assess how producing a negation in a verification task may impact long-term memory. Experiment 1 used the same memory paradigm as Mayo et al. (2014), consisting of several phases: first, reading a story describing the activity of a protagonist, immediately followed by a "yes-no" verification task, then a distractive task, and finally an incidental free recall test. Consistent with the previous results, negated sentences were recalled worse than affirmed sentences. Yet, there is a possible confounding between the effect of negation itself and the associative interference of two conflicting predicates - the original and the modified one - in negative trials. To avoid this, Experiment 2 modified the paradigm by including a story describing the activities of two protagonists in such a way that the affirmed and denied verification sentences had the same content, and only differed in the attribution of a specific event to the correct or wrong protagonist. The negation-induced forgetting effect was still powerful, while controlling for potential contaminating variables. Our finding would support that the impaired long-term memory could be ascribed to reusing the inhibitory mechanism of negation.

Multidimensional inhibitory signatures of sentential negation in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia

BACKGROUND

Processing of linguistic negation has been associated to inhibitory brain mechanisms. However, no study has tapped this link via multimodal measures in patients with core inhibitory alterations, a critical approach to reveal direct neural correlates and potential disease markers.

METHODS

Here we examined oscillatory, neuroanatomical, and functional connectivity signatures of a recently reported Go/No-go negation task in healthy controls and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) patients, typified by primary and generalized inhibitory disruptions. To test for specificity, we also recruited persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD), a disease involving frequent but nonprimary inhibitory deficits.

RESULTS

In controls, negative sentences in the No-go condition distinctly involved frontocentral delta (2-3 Hz) suppression, a canonical inhibitory marker. In bvFTD patients, this modulation was selectively abolished and significantly correlated with the volume and functional connectivity of regions supporting inhibition (e.g. precentral gyrus, caudate nucleus, and cerebellum). Such canonical delta suppression was preserved in the AD group and associated with widespread anatomo-functional patterns across non-inhibitory regions.

DISCUSSION

These findings suggest that negation hinges on the integrity and interaction of spatiotemporal inhibitory mechanisms. Moreover, our results reveal potential neurocognitive markers of bvFTD, opening a new agenda at the crossing of cognitive neuroscience and behavioral neurology.

Applying Deep Learning on a Few EEG Electrodes during Resting State Reveals Depressive States. A Data Driven Study

The growing number of depressive people and the overload in primary care services make it necessary to identify depressive states with easily accessible biomarkers such as mobile electroencephalography (EEG). Some studies have addressed this issue by collecting and analyzing EEG resting state in a search of appropriate features and classification methods. Traditionally, EEG resting state classification methods for depression were mainly based on linear or a combination of linear and non-linear features. We hypothesize that participants with ongoing depressive states differ from controls in complex patterns of brain dynamics that can be captured in EEG resting state data, using only nonlinear measures on a few electrodes, making it possible to develop cheap and wearable devices that could be even monitored through smartphones. To validate such a perspective, a resting-state EEG study was conducted with 50 participants, half with depressive state (DEP) and half controls (CTL). A data-driven approach was applied to select the most appropriate time window and electrodes for the EEG analyses, as suggested by Giacometti⁠, as well as the most efficient nonlinear features and classifiers, to distinguish between CTL and DEP participants. Nonlinear features showing temporo-spatial and spectral complexity were selected. The results confirmed that computing nonlinear features from a few selected electrodes in a 15 s time window are sufficient to classify DEP and CTL participants accurately. Finally, after training and testing internally the classifier, the trained machine was applied to EEG resting state data (CTL and DEP) from a publicly available database, validating the capacity of generalization of the classifier with data from different equipment, population, and environment obtaining an accuracy near 100%.

Language switching may facilitate the processing of negative responses

It has been proposed that processing sentential negation recruits the neural network of inhibitory control (de Vega et al., 2016; Beltrán et al., 2021). In addition, inhibition mechanisms also play a role in switching languages for bilinguals (Kroll et al., 2015). Since both processes may share inhibitory resources, the current study explored for the first time whether and how language-switching influences the processing of negation. To this end, two groups of Spanish-English bilinguals participated in an encoding-verification memory task. They read short stories involving the same two protagonists (Montse and Jordi), referring to their activities in four different scenarios in Spanish or English. Following each story, the participants received verification questions requiring “yes” or “no” responses depending on whether a given fact was correctly referred to one of the protagonists. Some of the verification questions were in the story’s original language (non-switch condition) and others in the alternate language (switch condition). Results revealed that language-switching facilitated negative responses compared to affirmative responses, exclusively for questions switching from dominant language (L1) to non-dominant language (L2). This effect might reflect that the domain-general mechanisms of inhibitory control are recruited at least partially for both language switch and negation process simultaneously, although this phenomenon is modulated by language dominance.

Editorial: “Neuromodulation of Language, Cognition and Emotion”

Neuromodulation can be defined as the alteration of brain activity by delivering physical stimuli to a specific neural region [...]

Multisession Anodal tDCS on the Right Temporo-Parietal Junction Improves Mentalizing Processes in Adults with Autistic Traits

Persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have impaired mentalizing skills. In this study, a group of persons with ASD traits (high-AQ scores) initially received sham tDCS before completing a pre-test in two mentalizing tasks: false belief and self-other judgments. Over the next week, on four consecutive days, they received sessions of anodal electrical stimulation (a-tDCS) over the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ), a region frequently associated with the theory of mind. On the last day, after the stimulation session, they completed a new set of mentalizing tasks. A control group (with low-AQ scores) matched in age, education and intelligence received just sham stimulation and completed the same pre-test and post-test. The results showed that the high-AQ group improved their performance (faster responses), after a-tDCS, in the false belief and in the self-other judgments of mental features, whereas they did not change performance in the false photographs or the self-other judgments of physical features. These selective improvements cannot be attributed to increased familiarity with the tasks, because the performance of the low-AQ control group remained stable about one week later. Therefore, our study provides initial proof that tDCS could be used to improve mentalizing skills in persons with ASD traits.

The neural inhibition network is causally involved in the disembodiment effect of linguistic negation

Negation applied to action contexts reduces the activation of the motor system. According to the Reusing Inhibition for Negation (RIN) hypothesis, such "disembodiment" effect occurs because understanding negations engages the reuse of inhibitory control mechanisms. Here, we investigated whether the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) - a key area of the inhibitory control system - contributes to primary motor cortex (M1) processing of negated action-sentences. Using a perturb-and-measure paradigm, we applied off-line low-frequency repetitive TMS (rTMS) over the rIFG, before performing a reading task involving action and attentional sentences presented in both affirmative or negative form. During the reading task, motor excitability was assessed by recording motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) induced by single-pulse TMS (spTMS) over the left M1, at two loci in the sentence: the verb or the object. Results show that after sham stimulation (baseline), motor excitability measured on the verb, was reduced for negative, compared to affirmative action sentences. Crucially, neuromodulation of rIFG suppressed this inhibitory effect of negation, since motor excitability was equaled for negative and affirmative action sentences. As expected, no effect of negation was observed for attentional sentences or when the pulse was delivered over the object. Our study confirms that understanding negative action sentences inhibits M1. This effect took place at an early stage of semantic processing (i.e., while processing the verb in our task), and faded at a later time-point. Critically, by highlighting a causal role of rIFG in this motor inhibition, we provide direct neurophysiological support to the RIN hypothesis.

Inhibitory Mechanisms in the Processing of Negations: A Neural Reuse Hypothesis

Negation is known to have inhibitory consequences for the information under its scope. However, how it produces such effects remains poorly understood. Recently, it has been proposed that negation processing might be implemented at the neural level by the recruitment of inhibitory and cognitive control mechanisms. On this line, this manuscript offers the hypothesis that negation reuses general-domain mechanisms that subserve inhibition in other non-linguistic cognitive functions. The first two sections describe the inhibitory effects of negation on conceptual representations and its embodied effects, as well as the theoretical foundations for the reuse hypothesis. The next section describes the neurophysiological evidence that linguistic negation interacts with response inhibition, along with the suggestion that both functions share inhibitory mechanisms. Finally, the manuscript concludes that the functional relation between negation and inhibition observed at the mechanistic level could be easily integrated with predominant cognitive models of negation processing.

Crossing hands behind your back reduces recall of manual action sentences and alters brain dynamics

The embodied meaning approach posits that understanding action-related language recruits motor processes in the brain. However, the functional impact of these motor processes on cognition has been questioned. The present study aims to provide new electrophysiological (EEG) evidence concerning the role of motor processes in the comprehension and memory of action language. Participants read lists of sentences including manual-action or attentional verbs, while keeping their hands either in front of them or crossing them behind their back. Results showed that posture impacted selectively the processing of manual action sentence, and not of attentional sentences, in three different ways: 1) EEG fronto-central beta rhythms, a signature of motor processes, were desynchronized while reading action sentences in the hands-in-front posture compared to the hands-behind posture. The estimated source was the posterior cingulate cortex, involved in proprioceptive regulation. 2) Recall of nouns associated with manual sentences decreased when learning occurred in the hands-behind posture. 3) ERPs analysis revealed that the initial posture at learning modulates neural processes during subsequent recall of manual sentences in the left superior frontal gyrus, which is related to motor processes. These results provide decisive evidence for the functional involvement of embodied simulations in the encoding and retrieval of action-related language.

Mutual influence between emotional language and inhibitory control processes. Evidence from an event-related potential study

There is abundant literature demonstrating that processing emotional stimuli modulates inhibitory control processes. However, the reverse effects, namely, how cognitive inhibition influences the processing of emotional stimuli, have been considerably neglected. This ERP study tries to fill this gap by studying the bidirectional interactions between emotional language and inhibitory processes. To this end, participants read emotional sentences, embedded in a cue-based Go-NoGo task. In Experiment 1, the critical emotional adjective preceded the Go-NoGo visual cue. The ERPs showed a significant reduction in the inhibition-related N2 component in NoGo trials when they were preceded by negative adjectives, compared to positive or neutral adjectives, indicating a priming-like effect on inhibitory control. Consistently, the estimated source of this interaction was the dorsomedial PFC, a region associated with inhibitory and control processes. In Experiment 2, the Go-NoGo cue preceded the emotional adjective, and the ERPs showed a sustained, broadly distributed LPP-like positivity for NoGo negative trials, relative to all the other conditions. In this case, the presetting of an inhibition state modulated the processing of negatively charged words. Together, the two experiments suggest a mutual facilitation between inhibitory control and negative valence, supporting thereby recent integrative theories of cognition-emotion interactions.

Exploring the Co-occurrence of Manual Verbs and Actions in Early Mother-Child Communication

The embodiment approach has shown that motor neural networks are involved in the processing of action verbs. There is developmental evidence that embodied effects on verb processing are already present in early years. Yet, the ontogenetic origin of this motor reuse in action verbs remains unknown. This longitudinal study investigates the co-occurrence of manual verbs and actions during mother-child daily routines (free play, bathing, and dining) when children were 1 to 2 (Group 1) and 2 to 3 (Group 2) years old. Eight mother-child dyads were video-recorded in 3-month intervals across 12 months (27 recording hours), and the timing of verbs and manual actions (21,876 entries) were coded by independent observers. Results showed that the probability of matched verb-action co-occurrences were much higher (0.80 and 0.77) than that of random co-occurrences (0.13 and 0.15) for Group 1 and Group 2, respectively. The distributions of the verb-action temporal intervals in both groups were quite symmetrical and skewed with the peak corresponding to both 0.00 s synchronic intervals (8% of the cases) and the shortest +5 s interval (40% of the cases). Mother-led instances occurred in both groups whereas child-led instances were restricted to Group 2. Mothers pragmatically aligned their verbal productions, since they repeatedly used (74%) those verbs they shared with their children's repertoire (31%). In conclusion, the early multisensory communicative and manipulative scene affords grounding of verb meanings on the ongoing actions, facilitating verb-action pairing in the realm of social interactions, providing a new dimension to the prevailing solipsistic approach to embodiment.

Enhancing Motor Brain Activity Improves Memory for Action Language: A tDCS Study

The embodied cognition approach to linguistic meaning posits that action language understanding is grounded in sensory-motor systems. However, evidence that the human motor cortex is necessary for action language memory is meager. To address this issue, in two groups of healthy individuals, we perturbed the left primary motor cortex (M1) by means of either anodal or cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), before participants had to memorize lists of manual action and attentional sentences. In each group, participants received sham and active tDCS in two separate sessions. Following anodal tDCS (a-tDCS), participants improved the recall of action sentences compared with sham tDCS. No similar effects were detected following cathodal tDCS (c-tDCS). Both a-tDCS and c-tDCS induced variable changes in motor excitability, as measured by motor-evoked potentials induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation. Remarkably, across groups, action-specific memory improvements were positively predicted by changes in motor excitability. We provide evidence that excitatory modulation of the motor cortex selectively improves performance in a task requiring comprehension and memory of action sentences. These findings indicate that M1 is necessary for accurate processing of linguistic meanings and thus provide causal evidence that high-order cognitive functions are grounded in the human motor system.

Electrifying discourse: Anodal tDCS of the primary motor cortex selectively reduces action appraisal in naturalistic narratives

Non-invasive stimulation of the primary motor cortex (M1) modulates processing of decontextualized action words and sentences (i.e., verbal units denoting bodily motion). This suggests that language comprehension hinges on brain circuits mediating the bodily experiences evoked by verbal material. Yet, despite its relevance to constrain mechanistic language models, such a finding fails to reveal whether and how relevant circuits operate in the face of full-blown, everyday texts. Using a novel naturalistic discourse paradigm, we examined whether direct modulation of M1 excitability influences the grasping of narrated actions. Following random group assignment, participants received anodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the left M1, or sham stimulation of the same area, or anodal stimulation of the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Immediately afterwards, they listened to action-laden and neutral stories and answered questions on information realized by verbs (denoting action and non-action processes) and circumstances (conveying locative or temporal details). Anodal stimulation of the left M1 selectively decreased outcomes on action-relative to non-action information -a pattern that discriminated between stimulated and sham participants with 74% accuracy. This result was particular to M1 and held irrespective of the subjects' working memory and vocabulary skills, further attesting to its specificity. Our findings suggest that offline modulation of motor-network excitability might lead to transient unavailability of putative resources needed to evoke actions in naturalistic texts, opening promising avenues for the language embodiment framework.

Presetting an inhibitory state modifies the neural processing of negated action sentences. An ERP study

It has been proposed that understanding negated action sentences (You don't cut the bread) uses the neural networks of action inhibition. The evidence comes from studies in which affirmative or negative action language immediately preceded a Go/NoGo task. It was found that negation selectively modulates inhibition-related signatures of NoGo trials, supporting the Reusing Inhibition for Negation (RIN) hypothesis. To further explore this hypothesis, this study tested the reverse effects; namely, how presetting an inhibitory state affects the processing of negated action sentences. To this end, Go/NoGo responses preceded sentence reading and EEG activities were recorded throughout the entire trials. ERP results indicate that the presetting of inhibition by the NoGo cue induced a sustained modulation of waveform for negated action sentences relative to affirmative ones, which began shortly after the negation operator onset and remained beyond the action verb onset. Crucially, the estimated sources of such effect were the right inferior frontal gyrus and the left middle frontal gyrus, both relevant regions in the action inhibition circuitry. These results, complemented by previous findings, support the idea that action inhibition and negated action language share neural mechanisms and influence each other, thus confirming and extending the RIN hypothesis.

Brain Inhibitory Mechanisms Are Involved in the Processing of Sentential Negation, Regardless of Its Content. Evidence From EEG Theta and Beta Rhythms

The two-step process account of negation understanding posits an initial representation of the negated events, followed by a representation of the actual state of events. On the other hand, behavioral and neurophysiological studies provided evidence that linguistic negation suppresses or reduces the activation of the negated events, contributing to shift attention to the actual state of events. However, the specific mechanism of this suppression is poorly known. Recently, based on the brain organization principle of neural reuse (Anderson, 2010), it has been proposed that understanding linguistic negation partially relies upon the neurophysiological mechanisms of response inhibition. Specifically, it was reported that negated action-related sentences modulate EEG signatures of response inhibition (de Vega et al., 2016; Beltrán et al., 2018). In the current EEG study, we ponder whether the reusing of response inhibition processes by negation is constrained to action-related contents or consists of a more general-purpose mechanism. To this end, we employed the same dual-task paradigm as in our prior study—a Go/NoGo task embedded into a sentence comprehension task—but this time including both action and non-action sentences. The results confirmed that the increase of theta power elicited by NoGo trials was modulated by negative sentences, compared to their affirmative counterparts, and this polarity effect was statistically similar for both action- and non-action-related sentences. Thus, a general-purpose inhibitory control mechanism, rather than one specific for action language, is likely operating in the comprehension of sentential negation to produce the transition between alternative representations.

Embodiment Effect on the Comprehension of Mandarin Manual Action Language: An ERP Study

Embodiment theories argue that language comprehension involves activating specific sensory-motor systems in the brain. Previous research performed in English and other Indo-European languages suggests that, when compared to compatible sentences referring to the same actions performed sequentially (e.g. 'After cleaning the wound he unrolled the bandage'), incompatible sentences describing two manual actions performed simultaneously by an agent (e.g. 'While cleaning the wound he unrolled the bandage') were worse understood and increased the event-related potentials (ERPs) component N400. The present ERP research aims to further investigate brain response to motor compatibility in native Mandarin speakers. The Chinese experimental sentences described two manual actions either in incongruent conditions marked by the Chinese parallel structure … … ('yibian…yibian…'/'while… while…') or congruent conditions marked by the sequential structure … … ('xian…ranhou…'/'firstly… then…'). The last action clause elicited larger fronto-central N400 in the incongruent condition, which reveals that there are semantic embodiment effects on the comprehension of Mandarin manual action language.

Both the mirror and the affordance systems might be impaired in adults with high autistic traits. Evidence from EEG mu and beta rhythms

The association of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with an altered mirror neuron system is still controversial. At the same time, the processing of object affordances by persons with ASD is a neglected issue. In this electroencephalographic study, adults differing in their autism quotient (AQ) scores were selected. We found anomalous modulation of mu and beta rhythms in high-AQ, compared to low-AQ persons, while they watched a set of goal-directed manual actions. This confirms that observing actions involving implicit intentions most clearly reveals the impairment of the mirror neurons system (MNS). The high-AQ group also showed anomalous mu and beta modulation when they looked at pictures of manipulable objects, indicating a deficit in processing motor affordances. We conclude that high-AQ adults have neural impairment of both the MNS and the affordance systems, which could underlie their relational problems with both people and objects. Autism Res 2019, 12: 1032-1042. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: Adults with autistic traits (high-autism quotient [AQ] scores) and matched controls (low-AQ) observed intentional hand actions, and pictures of manipulable and non-manipulable objects. The high-AQ group compared to the control group, showed anomalous modulation of the electroencephalographic motoric rhythms (mu and beta) while observing familiar goal-directed actions, confirming an impairment of their mirror neuron system. Also, their brain rhythms were anomalous when they watched manipulable objects, which suggest a dysfunction in their relation with objects (affordance system).

Are Sensory-Motor Relationships Encoded ad hoc or by Default?: An ERP Study

In this event-related potentials study we tested whether sensory-motor relations between concrete words are encoded by default or only under explicit ad hoc instructions. In Exp. 1, participants were explicitly asked to encode sensory-motor relations (e.g., “do the following objects fit in a pencil-cup?”), while other possible semantic relations remained implicit. In Exp. 2, using the same materials other group of participants were explicitly asked to encode semantic relations (e.g., “are the following objects related to a pencil-cup?”), and the possible sensory-motor relations remained implicit. The N400 component was sensitive to semantic relations (e.g., “desk” related to “pencil-cup”) both under implicit (Exp. 1) and explicit instructions (Exp. 2). By contrast, most sensory-motor relations (e.g., “pea” fitting in “pencil-cup”) were encoded ad hoc under explicit instructions (Exp. 1). Interestingly some sensory-motor relations were also encoded implicitly, but only when they corresponded to “functional” actions associated with high-related objects (e.g., “eraser” fitting in “pencil-cup”) and occurring at a late time window (500–650 ms; Exp. 2), suggesting that this type of sensory-motor relations were encoding by default.

Negation markers inhibit motor routines during typing of manual action verbs

We explored whether negation markers recruit inhibitory mechanisms during keyboard-based action-verb typing. In each trial, participants read two sentences: the first featured a context (There is a contract) and the second ended with a relevant verb which had to be immediately typed. Crucially, the verb could describe manual actions, non-manual actions or non-motor processes, with either affirmative (You do sign it) or negative (You don't sign it) polarity. We assessed the impact of verb type and polarity on two typing dimensions: motor programming (lapse between target onset and first keystroke) and motor execution (lapse between first and last keystroke). Negation yielded no effect on motor planning, but it selectively delayed typing execution for manual-action verbs, irrespective of the subjects' typing skills. This suggests that processing negations during comprehension of manual-action sentences recruits inhibitory mechanisms acting on same-effector movements. Our novel finding extends embodied models of language and effector-specific motor-language integration.

Sentential negation modulates inhibition in a stop-signal task. Evidence from behavioral and ERP data

Embodiment theories claim that language meaning involves sensory-motor simulation processes in the brain. A challenge for these theories, however, is to explain how abstract words, such as negations, are processed. In this article, we test the hypothesis that understanding sentential negation (e.g., You will not cut the bread) reuses the neural circuitry of response inhibition. Participants read manual action sentences with either affirmative or negative polarity, embedded in a Stop-Signal paradigm, while their EEG was recorded. The results showed that the inhibition-related N1 and P3 components were enhanced by successful inhibition. Most important, the early N1 amplitude was also modulated by sentence polarity, producing the largest values for successful inhibitions in the context of negative sentences, whereas no polarity effect was found for failing inhibition or go trials. The estimated neural sources for N1 effects revealed activations in the right inferior frontal gyrus, a typical inhibition-related area. Also, the estimated stop-signal reaction time was larger in trials with negative sentences. These results provide strong evidence that action-related negative sentences consume neural resources of response inhibition, resulting in less efficient processing in the Stop-Signal task.

Neural Substrates of Counterfactual Emotions After Risky Decisions in Late Adolescents and Young Adults

Adolescents' neural substrates of emotional reactions to the consequences of risky decisions are poorly understood. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, 30 late adolescents and 30 young adults made risky and neutral decisions in social scenarios and received valenced outcomes. Negative outcomes in risky decisions eliciting regret, as compared with negative outcomes in neutral decisions eliciting disappointment, activated executive control (orbitofrontal cortex) and self-relevance regions (middle temporal gyrus [MTG], posterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus) for both age groups. Young adults showed more activation than adolescents in regret and disappointment as compared with relief and elation conditions in the avoidance (insula), action monitoring (inferior frontal gyrus, pre-SMA, and caudate), and social-cognition regions (superior temporal sulcus and MTG). These late socio-emotional developments may pave the way for more adaptive decision-making behavior in social contexts.

When syntax meets action: Brain potential evidence of overlapping between language and motor sequencing

This study aims to extend the embodied cognition approach to syntactic processing. The hypothesis is that the brain resources to plan and perform motor sequences are also involved in syntactic processing. To test this hypothesis, Event-Related brain Potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read sentences with embedded relative clauses, judging for their acceptability (half of the sentences contained a subject-verb morphosyntactic disagreement). The sentences, previously divided into three segments, were self-administered segment-by-segment in two different sequential manners: linear or non-linear. Linear self-administration consisted of successively pressing three buttons with three consecutive fingers in the right hand, while non-linear self-administration implied the substitution of the finger in the middle position by the right foot. Our aim was to test whether syntactic processing could be affected by the manner the sentences were self-administered. Main results revealed that the ERPs LAN component vanished whereas the P600 component increased in response to incorrect verbs, for non-linear relative to linear self-administration. The LAN and P600 components reflect early and late syntactic processing, respectively. Our results convey evidence that language syntactic processing and performing non-linguistic motor sequences may share resources in the human brain.

Counterfactual Evaluation of Outcomes in Social Risk Decision-Making Situations: The Cognitive Developmental Paradox Revisited

We report a study that examined the existence of a cognitive developmental paradox in the counterfactual evaluation of decision-making outcomes. According to this paradox adolescents and young adults could be able to apply counterfactual reasoning and, yet, their counterfactual evaluation of outcomes could be biased in a salient socio-emotional context. To this aim, we analyzed the impact of health and social feedback on the counterfactual evaluation of outcomes in a laboratory decision-making task involving short narratives with the presence of peers. Forty risky (e.g., taking or refusing a drug), forty neutral decisions (e.g., eating a hamburger or a hotdog), and emotions felt following positive or negative outcomes were examined in 256 early, mid- and late adolescents, and young adults, evenly distributed. Results showed that emotional ratings to negative outcomes (regret and disappointment) but not to positive outcomes (relief and elation) were attenuated when feedback was provided. Evidence of development of cognitive decision-making capacities did also exist, as the capacity to perform faster emotional ratings and to differentially allocate more resources to the elaboration of emotional ratings when no feedback information was available increased with age. Overall, we interpret these findings as challenging the traditional cognitive developmental assumption that development necessarily proceeds from lesser to greater capacities, reflecting the impact of socio-emotional processes that could bias the counterfactual evaluation of social decision-making outcomes.

Readers of narratives take the protagonist's geographical perspective. Evidence from an event-related potential study

This ERP study explores how the reader's brain is sensitive to the protagonist's perspective in the fictitious environment of narratives. Participants initially received narratives describing a protagonist living in a given geographical place. Later on they were given short paragraphs describing another character as "coming" or "going" to a place either close to or distant from the protagonist. Paragraphs referring to distant places elicited larger negative waves than those with places close to the protagonist. Moreover, narratives with the verb to come incoherent with the protagonist's perspective (e.g., "she came to the distant place") elicited larger negative-going waves in the 320-400ms time window than coherent paragraphs (e.g., "she came to the close place"). These results indicate that readers of narratives were able to take the protagonist's geographical perspective, showing discourse-level coherence effects when they read motion sentences with the marked deictic verb to come.

Neurophysiological traces of the reader's geographical perspective associated with the deictic verbs of motion to go and to come

This ERP study explores how participants activate their own geographical perspective, while reading sentences describing a motion (to come or to go), or a static spatial relation (to be) referred either to the participant's current location or a distant place. The ERPs recorded at the place names revealed that, compared to "distant places", "close places" enhanced ERP's components, associated with motivational relevance, in the context of the deictic verbs of motion to come and to go, but not in the context of the static verb to be. Also, in the context of the verbs of motion source estimation showed that "close places" elicited more activity than "distant places" in the medial temporal cortex (around the parahippocampal gyrus), suggesting projection of the reader's self-relevant information, or retrieval of geographical episodic memories. Finally, sentences describing motions congruent with the self-perspective (e.g. "going to distant place") elicited less activation than sentences incongruent with the self-perspective (e.g. "coming to distant place") in the right fronto-polar cortex and in the posterior cingulate cortex, regions generally associated with the other's perspective or with self/other perspective conflict. These findings provide information on the brain processes underlying readers' perspective taking, guided by the deictic verbs of motion.

Carefully encoding approach/avoidance body locomotion with interpersonal conduct in narrated interactions

Approach and avoidance tendencies towards valenced others could be associated with our interpersonal conduct towards them: helping would be associated with approach tendency, and harming (or denying help) would be associated with avoidance. We propose that the encoding of this association enjoys attentional priority, as approach/avoidance representations of past interactions would regulate one's predisposition to either help or harm in subsequent interactions. Participants listened to interactions conveying positive/negative conduct between 2 characters. The conduct verb was then presented visually with a cue prompting participants to quickly step forward or backward. Subsequently, they performed a recognition task of noncentral story details. In matching conditions (positive conduct-step forward, negative conduct-step backward) the concurrent step should interfere with the encoding of motor representation of the conduct verb, and the verb encoding should divert attentional resources from the consolidation of memory traces of less relevant information. Results showed the predicted impairment in the recognition task in matching conditions, which supports an attentional bias towards encoding motor approach/avoidance representation of interpersonal conduct in the process of comprehending narrated interactions.

Action Sentences Activate Sensory Motor Regions in the Brain Independently of Their Status of Reality

Some studies have reported that understanding concrete action-related words and sentences elicits activations of motor areas in the brain. The present fMRI study goes one step further by testing whether this is also the case for comprehension of nonfactual statements. Three linguistic structures were used (factuals, counterfactuals, and negations), referring either to actions or, as a control condition, to visual events. The results showed that action sentences elicited stronger activations than visual sentences in the SMA, extending to the primary motor area, as well as in regions generally associated with the planning and understanding of actions (left superior temporal gyrus, left and right supramarginal gyri). Also, we found stronger activations for action sentences than for visual sentences in the extrastriate body area, a region involved in the visual processing of human body movements. These action-related effects occurred not only in factuals but also in negations and counterfactuals, suggesting that brain regions involved in action understanding and planning are activated by default even when the actions are described as hypothetical or as not happening. Moreover, some of these regions overlapped with those activated during the observation of action videos, indicating that the act of understanding action language and that of observing real actions share neural networks. These results support the claim that embodied representations of linguistic meaning are important even in abstract linguistic contexts.

Adolescents' risky decision-making activates neural networks related to social cognition and cognitive control processes

This study examines by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging the neural mechanisms underlying adolescents’ risk decision-making in social contexts. We hypothesize that the social context could engage brain regions associated with social cognition processes and developmental changes are also expected. Sixty participants (adolescents: 17–18, and young adults: 21–22 years old) read narratives describing typical situations of decision-making in the presence of peers. They were asked to make choices in risky situations (e.g., taking or refusing a drug) or ambiguous situations (e.g., eating a hamburger or a hotdog). Risky as compared to ambiguous scenarios activated bilateral temporoparietal junction (TPJ), bilateral middle temporal gyrus (MTG), right medial prefrontal cortex, and the precuneus bilaterally; i.e., brain regions related to social cognition processes, such as self-reflection and theory of mind (ToM). In addition, brain structures related to cognitive control were active [right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), bilateral orbitofrontal cortex], whereas no significant clusters were obtained in the reward system (ventral striatum). Choosing the dangerous option involved a further activation of control areas (ACC) and emotional and social cognition areas (temporal pole). Adolescents employed more neural resources than young adults in the right DLPFC and the right TPJ in risk situations. When choosing the dangerous option, young adults showed a further engagement in ToM related regions (bilateral MTG) and in motor control regions related to the planning of actions (pre-supplementary motor area). Finally, the right insula and the right superior temporal gyrus were more activated in women than in men, suggesting more emotional involvement and more intensive modeling of the others’ perspective in the risky conditions. These findings call for more comprehensive developmental accounts of decision-making in social contexts that incorporate the role of emotional and social cognition processes.

Metaphors are Embodied, and so are Their Literal Counterparts

This study investigates whether understanding up/down metaphors as well as semantically homologous literal sentences activates embodied representations online. Participants read orientational literal sentences (e.g., she climbed up the hill), metaphors (e.g., she climbed up in the company), and abstract sentences with similar meaning to the metaphors (e.g., she succeeded in the company). In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were asked to perform a speeded upward or downward hand motion while they were reading the sentence verb. The hand motion either matched or mismatched the direction connoted by the sentence. The results showed a meaning-action effect for metaphors and literals, that is, faster hand motion responses in the matching conditions. Notably, the matching advantage was also found for homologous abstract sentences, indicating that some abstract ideas are conceptually organized in the vertical dimension, even when they are expressed by means of literal sentences. In Experiment 3, participants responded to an upward or downward visual motion associated with the sentence verb by pressing a single key. In this case, the facilitation effect for matching visual motion-sentence meaning faded, indicating that the visual motion component is less important than the action component in conceptual metaphors. Most up and down metaphors convey emotionally positive and negative information, respectively. We suggest that metaphorical meaning elicits upward/downward movements because they are grounded on the bodily expression of the corresponding emotions.

Discourse-based emotional consistency modulates early and middle components of event-related potentials

In this study, participants read stories describing emotional episodes with either a positive or negative valence (Experiment 1). Following each story, participants were exposed to short sentences referring to the protagonist, and the event-related potential (ERP) for each sentence's last word was recorded. Some sentences described the protagonist's emotion, either consistent or inconsistent with the story; others were neutral; and others involved a semantically anomalous word. Inconsistent emotions were found to elicit larger N100/P200 and N400 than consistent emotions. However, when participants were exposed to the same critical sentences in a control experiment (Experiment 2) in which the stories had been removed, emotional consistency effects disappeared in all ERP components, demonstrating that these effects were discourse-level phenomena. By contrast, the ordinary N400 effect for locally anomalous words in the sentence was obtained both with and without story context. In conclusion, reading stories describing events with emotional significance determines strong and very early anticipations of an emotional word.

Sex ratio in rabbits following modified artificial insemination

The possibility of modifying the sex ratio of rabbit litters was examined in two experiments involving artificial insemination (AI) with fresh semen. Three time periods of AI, relative to ovulation, were used in Experiment 1: (a) control, GnRH was administered immediately after AI with ovulation estimated to occur 10-12h after AI; (b) early AI, GnRH was given 6h after AI so that ovulation was delayed until 16-18 h after AI; (c) late AI, GnRH was administered 6h before AI, which was performed 4-6h before ovulation. There were 13 does per treatment, and each doe was used in the same treatment for three AIs at 42-day intervals. The second experiment involved two treatments in which the does were inseminated as for the control in Experiment 1 and AI was performed using semen prepared in the normal manner (Treatment 1) or after centrifugation through 11 discontinuous Percoll gradients (Treatment 2). There were 20 does per treatment, and each doe was used in the same treatment for three AIs at 42-day intervals. The proportion of female kits produced in Experiment 1 was: control 41.7+/-19.1%, early AI 49.8+/-17.8%, and late AI 41.4+/-16.4%. These proportions did not differ significantly between treatments or from the expected 50:50 sex ratio. Fertility was reduced by the early (60.0%) and late (73.7%) AI treatments relative to control AI (80.0%), and the difference between early and control AI almost achieved statistical significance (P<0.07). In Experiment 2, the proportion of female kits was not affected by treatment (control, 51.1%; Percoll, 54.8%), and there was a similar level of fertility for both treatments (control, 76.0%; Percoll, 74.1%). Prolificacy and perinatal mortality were not affected by treatment in either experiment. It was concluded that neither the timing of insemination nor Percoll centrifugation of semen affected the sex ratio at birth of rabbit litters.