Ricerc@Sapienza

Moral sense is defined as a feeling of the rightness or wrongness of an action that knowingly causes harm to people other than the agent. The large amount of data collected over the past decade allows drawing some definite conclusions about the neurobiological foundations of moral reasoning as well as a systematic investigation of methodological variables during fMRI studies. Here, we verified the existence of converging and consistent evidence in the current literature by means of a meta-analysis of fMRI studies of moral reasoning, using activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis.

Commentary: Cortical plasticity and olfactory function in early blindness

Perseverative cognition represents a prototypical example of how our internal thoughts can impact our psychological and physical health, as if we were facing an actual environmental stressor (Brosschot et al., 2006). The mechanisms involved—together with other emblematic examples like the placebo effect—provide clear evidence for brain-body interaction.

Environmental enrichment (EE) is an experimental setting broadly used for investigating the effects of complex social, cognitive, and sensorimotor stimulations on brain structure and function. Recent studies point out that parental EE experience, even occurring in the pre-reproductive phase, affects neural development and behavioral trajectories of the offspring. In the present study we investigated the influences of pre-reproductive EE of female rats on maternal behavior and adolescent male offspring's coping response to an inescapable stressful situation after chronic social isolation.

In this article, we explore the neural correlates of the general and specific factors assessed by the Life Orientation Test-Revised. These factors have been shown to assess general optimism (GO) and a form of self-enhancement akin to unrealistic optimism (SP). Toward our aim, we used a standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA), which provides electroencephalographic (EEG) localization measures that are independent of recording reference. Resting-EEG and self-report measures of GO and SP were collected from 51 female undergraduates.

Based on their pharmacological properties, psychoactive drugs are supposed to take control of the natural reward system to finally drive compulsory drug seeking and consumption. However, psychoactive drugs are not used in an arbitrary way as pure pharmacological reinforcement would suggest, but rather in a highly specific manner depending on non-pharmacological factors. While pharmacological effects of psychoactive drugs are well studied, neurobiological mechanisms of non-pharmacological factors are less well understood.

We have previously shown that in seven drug-resistant epilepsy patients, both reachinggrasping
of objects and the mere observation of those actions did desynchronize
subdural electrocorticographic (ECoG) alpha (8–13 Hz) and beta (14–30) rhythms as
a sign of cortical activation in primary somatosensory-motor, lateral premotor and
ventral prefrontal areas (Babiloni et al., 2016a). Furthermore, that desynchronization was
greater during action execution than during its observation. In the present exploratory

Thyroid hormones are important for the development of the central nervous system. Since the fetal thyroid gland is not functioning until mid-gestation, transport of maternal thyroid hormones across the placenta is essential during the early phases of gestation. Maternal thyroid deficiency has been associated with a higher incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders in the newborns. The relationship between maternal hypothyroidism and the onset of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in the offspring, however, is still debated.