Ricerc@Sapienza

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.

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