Ricerc@Sapienza

Neuroaesthetics, the science studying the biological underpinnings of aesthetic experience,
recently extended its area of investigation to literary art; this was the humus where neurocognitive
poetics blossomed. Divina Commedia represents one of the most important, famous and studied
poems worldwide. Poetry stimuli are characterized by elements (meter and rhyme) promoting
the processing fluency, a core aspect of neuroaesthetics theories. In addition, given the evidence

Purpose: In the current study, we aimed to investigate the EEG correlates of dream recall (DR) monitoring both the homeostatic and state-trait like factors. We assessed the influence of the time of night on the EEG correlates of DR from REM sleep. Specifically, we tested the continuity-hypothesis (on the theta EEG band) and the activation-hypothesis (on the delta and beta bands).

Dream research has advanced significantly over the last twenty years, thanks to the new
applications of neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques. Many findings pointed out that
mental activity during sleep and wakefulness shared similar neural bases. On the other side, recent
studies have highlighted that dream experience is promoted by significant brain activation,
characterized by reduced low frequencies and increased rapid frequencies. Additionally, several

Once questioned the assumption that dreaming depends on REM sleep, subsequent studies focused on the neural correlates of dream recall (DR). Considering the indirect access to the sleep mentation, this chapter reviews the main neuropsychological, neuroimaging, and electrophysiological findings on DR. Compelling evidence supports the idea that shared mechanisms between sleep and wakefulness underline the encoding and retrieval of episodic memory, studying DR as amnestic trace. On the other side, several observations suggest that higher cortical activation is crucial to dreaming.

Sleep electroencephalogram (EEG) has a trait-like nature. Several findings highlighted the heritability of spectral power in specific frequency ranges and sleep spindles during NREM sleep. However, a genetic influence on the K-complex (KC), one of the electrophysiological hallmarks of NREM sleep, has never been assessed. Here, we investigated the heritability of the KC detected during NREM stage 2 comparing 10 monozygotic (MZ) and 10 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs.

Objective: Aim of the present study is to investigate the alterations of brain networks derived from EEG
analysis in pre- and post-sleep onset conditions after 40 h of sleep deprivation (SD) compared to sleep
onset after normal sleep in 39 healthy subjects.
Methods: Functional connectivity analysis was made on electroencelographic (EEG) cortical sources of
current density and small world (SW) index was evaluated in the EEG frequency bands (delta, theta,
alpha, sigma and beta).

Sleep has a crucial role in brain functioning and cognition, and several sleep electroencephalography (EEG) hallmarks are associated with intellectual abilities, neural plasticity, and learning processes. Starting from this evidence, a growing interest has been raised regarding the involvement of the sleep EEG in brain maturation and cognitive functioning during typical development (TD). The aim of this review is to provide a general framework about the maturational changes and the functional role of the human sleep EEG during TD from birth to late adolescence (22 years).

We have entered an era of a steep increase in the absolute and relative number of older
people. This well-come phenomenon represents a major challenge for health care. However, maturational
changes in sleep associated with aging do not easily appear as main factors, even though
sleep alterations in the aging process lead to many detrimental consequences. In this editorial paper,
we summarize the present knowledge about the main aging-related sleep modifications and their

Neuromarketing predicts that multiple factors contribute to the choice of a product, among them, the perceived value, pleasantness, and emotion related to the use of it. In this framework, a particular field is constituted by luxury items, such as wine. Wine is particularly suitable to marketing effects, both extrinsic (label) and intrinsic features (volatile composition and color) lead to the constitution of the experienced value, and the analysis of the contribution of olfaction to the process of tasting is fundamental in order to study flavor perception.