Papers by Chiara Spironelli
Neuropsychologia, Oct 1, 2019
Multitasking is ubiquitous in everyday life. It can have a detrimental effect on several cognitiv... more Multitasking is ubiquitous in everyday life. It can have a detrimental effect on several cognitive abilities including spatial processing in both brain-damaged and healthy participants. The present study investigated, in healthy adults, the electrophysiological mechanisms associated with correct detection vs. misdetection of peripheral visual target(s) while processing concurrent visual or auditory stimuli. Correct responses were coupled with increased N1 amplitude under visual (i.e., intra-modal) load but not under auditory (i.e., cross-modal) load. Under visual load, error responses were associated to opposite patterns on N1/N2 components for unilateral and bilateral stimuli. In particular, errors were marked by significantly reduced N1 and N2 amplitude for the left and right visual field, respectively, whereas higher N1 amplitude was found for errors to bilateral targets. This suggests that early negative components represent the biological marker of target awareness under visual load, whereby correct target detection is grounded on a threshold criterion. These results provide an electrophysiological correlate for the allocation of capacity-limited cognitive resources during the concurrent processing of multiple and heterogeneous visual stimuli.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Jun 6, 2022
Films, compared with emotional static pictures, represent true-to-life dynamic stimuli that are b... more Films, compared with emotional static pictures, represent true-to-life dynamic stimuli that are both ecological and effective in inducing an emotional response given the involvement of multimodal stimulation (i.e., visual and auditory systems). We hypothesized that a direct comparison between the two methods would have shown greater efficacy of movies, compared to standardized slides, in eliciting emotions at both subjective and neurophysiological levels. To this end, we compared these two methods of emotional stimulation in a group of 40 young adults (20 females). Electroencephalographic (EEG) Alpha rhythm (8-12 Hz) was recorded from 64 scalp sites while participants watched (in counterbalanced order across participants) two separate blocks of 45 slides and 45 clips. Each block included three groups of 15 validated stimuli classified as Erotic, Neutral and Fear content. Greater self-perceived arousal was found after the presentation of Fear and Erotic video clips compared with the same slide categories. sLORETA analysis showed a different lateralization pattern: slides induced decreased Alpha power (greater activation) in the left secondary visual area (Brodmann Area, BA, 18) to Erotic and Fear compared with the Neutral stimuli. Instead, video clips elicited reduced Alpha in the homologous right secondary visual area (BA 18) again to both Erotic and Fear contents compared with Neutral ones. Comparison of emotional stimuli showed smaller Alpha power to Erotic than to Fear stimuli in the left precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex (BA 7/31) for the slide condition, and in the left superior parietal lobule (BA 7) for the clip condition. This result matched the parallel analysis of the overlapped Mu rhythm (corresponding to the upper Alpha band) and can be interpreted as Mu/Alpha EEG suppression elicited by greater motor action tendency to Erotic (approach motivation) compared to Fear (withdrawal motivation) stimuli. Correlation analysis found lower Alpha in the left middle temporal gyrus (BA 21) associated with greater pleasantness to Erotic slides (r 38 =-0.62, p = 0.009), whereas lower Alpha in the right supramarginal/angular gyrus (BA 40/39) was associated with
Symmetry, Dec 13, 2021
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Psychological Medicine, Apr 3, 2013
Background. The occurrence of a significant relationship between psychopathic traits and intellig... more Background. The occurrence of a significant relationship between psychopathic traits and intelligence is still open to debate. Most of the relevant information has been obtained from crystallized IQ tests or on psychopathic male offenders. In this study we hypothesized a negative correlation between psychopathic traits and fluid intelligence on a sample of criminal female in-patients. Method. We carried out a correlational study on a selected sample of 56 criminal female offenders. Variables that were measured include the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R) total score (and, separately, the scores from its four subscales: Interpersonal, Affective, Lifestyle and Antisocial) and fluid IQ measured by Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM). Results. Pearson's correlation between RPM IQ and total PCL-R score was negative (r 54 = − 0.55, p < 0.001); women with greater psychopathy traits (total PCL-R score) had lower IQ scores. Negative correlations were also found between IQ and the four PCL-R subscales, Interpersonal, Affective, Lifestyle and Antisocial (r 54 = − 0.35, p < 0.01, r 54 = − 0.52, p < 0.001, r 54 = − 0.53, p < 0.001, and r 54 = − 0.49, p < 0.001 respectively). Conclusions. The results indicate a general negative relationship between PCL-R and IQ, equally distributed across the four subcomponents of the psychopathic trait, and support the view that unsuccessful psychopathic women have poor planning and are unable to foresee and represent future consequences of their actions.
Neuropsychologia, Aug 1, 2016
Past studies have shown consistent evidence that body position significantly affects brain activi... more Past studies have shown consistent evidence that body position significantly affects brain activity, revealing that both head-down and horizontal bed-rest are associated with cortical inhibition and altered perceptual and cognitive processing. The present study investigates the effects of body position on spontaneous, open-eyes, resting-state EEG cortical activity in 32 young women randomly assigned to one of two conditions, seated position (SP) or horizontal bed rest (BR). A between-group repeated-measure experimental design was used, EEG recordings were made from 38 scalp locations, and low-frequency (delta and alpha) amplitudes of the two groups were compared in four different conditions: when both groups (a) were seated (T0), (b) assumed two different body positions (seated vs. supine conditions, immediate [T1] and 120 min later [T2]), and (c) were seated again (T3). Overall, the results showed no a priori between-group differences (T0) before experimental manipulation. As expected, delta amplitude, an index of cortical inhibition in awake resting participants, was significantly increased in group BR, revealing both rapid (T1) and mid-term (T2) inhibitory effects of supine or horizontal positions. Instead, the alpha band was highly sensitive to postural transitions, perhaps due to baroreceptor intervention and, unlike the delta band, underwent habituation and decreased after a 2-h bed rest. These results indicate clear-cut differences at rest between the seated and supine positions, thus supporting the view that the role of body position in the differences found between brain metabolic methods (fMRI and PET) in which participants lie horizontally, and EEG-MEG-TMS techniques with participants in a seated position, has been largely underestimated so far.
Default mode network alterations underlie auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia
Journal of Psychiatric Research, Nov 1, 2022
Brain asymmetry in resting state and during linguistic tasks in major depression vs. dysthymia: an EEG alpha study
Language lateralization of theta and beta EEG bands in developmental dyslexia
Translational Psychiatry, Oct 6, 2022
Bipolar patients (BD) in the euthymic phase show almost no symptoms, nevertheless possibility of ... more Bipolar patients (BD) in the euthymic phase show almost no symptoms, nevertheless possibility of relapse is still present. We expected to find a psychobiological trace of their vulnerability by analyzing a specific network-the Language Network (LN)connecting many high-level processes and brain regions measured at rest. According to Crow's hypothesis on the key role of language in the origin of psychoses, we expected an altered asymmetry of the LN in euthymic BDs. Eighteen euthymic BD patients (10 females; age = 54.50 ± 11.38 years) and 16 healthy controls (HC) (8 females; age = 51.16 ± 11.44 years) underwent a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan at rest. The LN was extracted through independent component analysis. Then, LN time series was used to compute the fractional amplitude of the low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) index, which was then correlated with clinical scales. Compared with HC, euthymic patients showed an altered LN with greater activation of Broca's area right homologous and anterior insula together with reduced activation of left middle temporal gyrus. The normalized fALFF analysis on BD patients' LN time series revealed that the Slow-5 fALFF band was positively correlated with residual mania symptoms but negatively associated with depression scores. In line with Crow's hypothesis postulating an altered language hemispheric asymmetry in psychoses, we revealed, in euthymic BD patients, a right shift involving both the temporal and frontal linguistic hubs. The fALFF applied to LN allowed us to highlight a number of significant correlations of this measure with residual mania and depression psychiatric symptoms.
Altered Language Asymmetry in patients with Major Depression: a Beta EEG band study
International Journal of Psychophysiology, Oct 1, 2016
European Psychiatry, Apr 1, 2021
The aim of this exploratory analysis was to assess the impact of different doses on vortioxetine ... more The aim of this exploratory analysis was to assess the impact of different doses on vortioxetine effectiveness in clinical practice in Greece. Methods: In this non-interventional study, open-label vortioxetine was administered at a flexible dosage (5-20 mg/d). Patients receiving 5/10 mg vortioxetine (group A), at the end of the study, were compared to patients receiving 15/20mg vortioxetine (group B). At baseline, 1 and 3 months, depressive symptoms and functioning were assessed by MADRS and SDS. Multiple regression was used for the statistical analyses. Results: The study included 336 MDD patients. At the end of the study, 64.3% (n=200) of patients were receiving 15/20 mg vortioxetine. Higher vortioxetine dose at month 3 was significantly correlated with higher MADRS total score at baseline (p<0.001). SDS total score change from baseline to month 3 was significantly associated with vortioxetine dose (p<0.001), with group A and group B showing improvements of-9.2AE8.2 and-12.1AE6.0, respectively-whereas such association was not observed for MADRS total score. Conclusions: In conclusion, patients with more severe depressive symptoms were treated with higher antidepressant doses. However, beyond symptom improvement, vortioxetine effectiveness on patient functioning seems to increase with higher doses. Conflict of interest: A. Galanopoulos and E. Papalexi are full-time employees in Lundbeck Hellas. A. Ettrup is a full-time employee in H. Lundbeck A/S.
Biomedicines
Abnormalities of the Language Network (LN) have been found in different psychiatric conditions (e... more Abnormalities of the Language Network (LN) have been found in different psychiatric conditions (e.g., schizophrenia and bipolar disorder), supporting the hypothesis that language plays a central role in a high-level integration/connectivity of second-level cognitive processes and the underlying cortical regions. This view implies a continuum of shared neural alterations along the psychotic disorder spectrum. In particular, bipolar disorder (BD) patients were recently documented to have an altered LN asymmetry during resting state. The extent to which the LN architecture is altered and stable also during a language task has yet to be investigated. To address this question, we analyzed fMRI data recorded during an open-eyes resting state session and a silent verbal fluency task in 16 euthymic BD patients and 16 matched healthy controls (HC). Functional connectivity in the LN of both groups was computed using spatial independent component analysis, and group comparisons were carried ou...
Symmetry
In the last few decades, the incidence of mood disorders skyrocketed worldwide and has brought an... more In the last few decades, the incidence of mood disorders skyrocketed worldwide and has brought an increasing human and economic burden. Depending on the main symptoms and their evolution across time, they can be classified in several clinical subgroups. A few psychobiological indices have been extensively investigated as promising markers of mood disorders. Among these, frontal asymmetry measured at rest with quantitative EEG has represented the main available marker in recent years. Only a few studies so far attempted to distinguish the features and differences among diagnostic types of mood disorders by using this index. The present study measured frontal EEG asymmetry during a 5-min resting state in three samples of patients with bipolar disorder in a Euthymic phase (EBD, n = 17), major depressive disorder (MDD, n = 25) and persistent depressive disorder (PDD, n = 21), once termed dysthymia. We aimed to test the hypothesis that MDD and PDD lack the typical leftward asymmetry exhi...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
The number of elements in a small set of items is appraised in a fast and exact manner, a phenome... more The number of elements in a small set of items is appraised in a fast and exact manner, a phenomenon called subitizing. In contrast, humans provide imprecise responses when comparing larger numerosities, with decreasing precision as the number of elements increases. Estimation is thought to rely on a dedicated system for the approximate representation of numerosity. While previous behavioral and neuroimaging studies associate subitizing to a domain-general system related to object tracking and identification, the nature of small numerosity processing is still debated. We investigated the neural processing of numerosity across subitizing and estimation ranges by examining electrophysiological activity during the memory retention period in a delayed numerical match-to-sample task. We also assessed potential differences in the neural signature of numerical magnitude in a fully non-symbolic or cross-format comparison. In line with behavioral performance, we observed modulation of pariet...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
In recent years, many studies have focused on resting-state brain activity, and especially on fun... more In recent years, many studies have focused on resting-state brain activity, and especially on functional connectivity (FC), an approach that typically describes the statistical interdependence of activity in distant brain regions through specific networks. Our aim was to study the neurophysiological correlates of emotion dysregulation. Therefore, we expected that both the Default Mode Network (DMN), and the Ventral Attention Network (VAN) would have been involved. Indeed, the latter plays a role in the automatic orienting of attention towards biologically salient stimuli and includes key regions for emotion control and modulation. Starting from a community sample of 422 female students, we selected 25 women with high traits of emotion dysregulation (HD group) and 25 with low traits (LD group). They underwent a 64-channel EEG recording during a five-minute resting state with eyes open. Seed-based FC was computed on the EEG Alpha band (8–13 Hz) as a control band, and on EEG Gamma powe...
While the role of selective attention in filtering out irrelevant information has been exten-sive... more While the role of selective attention in filtering out irrelevant information has been exten-sively studied, its characteristics and neural underpinnings when multiple environmental sti-muli have to be processed in parallel are much less known. Building upon a dual-task paradigm that induced spatial awareness deficits for contralesional hemispace in right hemisphere-damaged patients, we investigated the electrophysiological correlates of multi-modal load during spatial monitoring in healthy participants. The position of appearance of briefly presented, lateralized targets had to be reported either in isolation (single task) or together with a concurrent task, visual or auditory, which recruited additional attentional resources (dual-task). This top-down manipulation of attentional load, without any change of the sensory stimulation, modulated the amplitude of the first positive ERP response (P1) and shifted its neural generators, with a suppression of the signal in the early visual ...
Default mode network shows alterations for low-frequency fMRI fluctuations in euthymic bipolar disorder
Journal of Psychiatric Research, 2021
Bipolar disorder (BD) is a psychiatric condition causing acute dysfunctional mood states and emot... more Bipolar disorder (BD) is a psychiatric condition causing acute dysfunctional mood states and emotion regulation. Specific neuropsychological features are often present also among patients in euthymic phase, who do not show clear psychotic symptoms, and for whom the characterization from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is very limited. This study aims at identifying the neural and behavioral correlates of the default mode network (DMN) using the fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (fALFF). Eighteen euthymic BD patients (10 females; age = 54.50 ± 11.38 years) and sixteen healthy controls (HC) (8 females; age = 51.16 ± 11.44 years) underwent a 1.5T fMRI scan at rest. The DMN was extracted through independent component analysis. Then, DMN time series was used to compute the fALFF, which was correlated with clinical scales. From the between-group comparison, no significant differences emerged in correspondence to regions belonging to the DMN. For fALFF analysis, we reported significant increase of low-frequency fluctuations for lower frequencies, and decreases for higher frequencies compared to HC. Correlations with clinical scales showed that an increase in higher frequency spectral content was associated with lower levels of mania and higher levels of anxious symptoms, while an increase in lower frequencies was linked to lower depressive symptoms. Starting from our findings on the DMN in euthymic BD patients, we suggest that the fALFF derived from network time series represents a viable approach to investigate the behavioral correlates of resting state networks, and the pathophysiological mechanisms of different psychiatric conditions.
Symmetry, 2021
Language-induced asymmetry to single word reading has been well investigated in past research. Le... more Language-induced asymmetry to single word reading has been well investigated in past research. Less known are the complex processes and related asymmetries occurring when a word is compared with the previous one, according to specific tasks. To this end, we used a paradigm based on 80 sequential word pair comparisons and three blocked tasks: phonological, semantic and orthographical matching judgment. Participants had to decide whether the target word (W2) did or did not match the prime word (W1), presented 2 sec before, according to the task. The event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked by W2 in 20 participants have been analyzed. The first negative wave, the Recognition Potential (RP), peaking at about 120 ms over parietal sites, showed greater amplitude at left sites in all tasks, thus revealing the typical left-lateralization. At frontal sites, only the phonological task showed left lateralization. The following N400 (300–450 ms) showed an interesting interaction: Match trials eli...
Scientific Reports, 2020
Major depression (MDD) has been associated with an altered EEG frontal asymmetry measured in rest... more Major depression (MDD) has been associated with an altered EEG frontal asymmetry measured in resting state; nevertheless, this association has showed a weak consistency across studies. In the present study, which starts from an evolutionistic view of psychiatric disorders, we investigated frontal asymmetry in MDD, using language as a probe to test the integrity of large inter- and intra-hemispheric networks and processes. Thirty MDD patients (22 women) and 32 matched controls (HC) were recruited for an EEG recording in resting state and during two linguistic tasks, phonological and semantic. Normalized alpha and beta EEG spectral bands were measured across all three conditions in the two groups. EEG alpha amplitude showed no hemispheric asymmetry, regardless of group, both at rest and during linguistic tasks. During resting state, analysis of EEG beta revealed a lack of hemispheric asymmetry in both groups, but during linguistic tasks, HC exhibited the typical greater left frontal b...
International journal of law and psychiatry
A lack of empathy, interpersonal dominance, aggression and the exploitation of others are the key... more A lack of empathy, interpersonal dominance, aggression and the exploitation of others are the key features of both narcissism and psychopathic disorders. With the aim to better capture the shared facets of these traits, this study developed a new tool named the Capability to Influence Others (CIO) Inventory, which is based on the pleasantness evaluation of ten items-verbs presented in the infinitive form. The inventory, characterized by very quick submission, was administered to 67 males and 100 females and was correlated with the concurrent Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) and Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP). An exploratory factor analysis supported the presence of only one factor in both the male and female groups. Internal consistency of the CIO was very good for both men (Cronbach's alpha = 0.85; 95% CIs: 0.80-0.90) and women (Cronbach's alpha = 0.83; 95% CIs: 0.77-0.87). Further statistics showed a high correlation between the CIO and the LSRP-F1 (...
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Papers by Chiara Spironelli