News

Elderly people can improve episodic memory by neurostimulation of the cerebellum

A study demonstrated that neurostimulation of the cerebellum led to improvements in episodic memory performance in healthy elderly individuals.

Does aging change the way we interpret face processing of emotion?

Study shows that aging may hamper the neural processing of facial expressions of emotion.

Hypnosis, meditation, and prayer: which is most helpful for pain management?

Researchers found that a single session of hypnosis and mindfulness meditation, but not prayer, may be useful for managing acute pain.

Does playing with parents at home make it easier for young children to adapt to preschool?

A study showed that children with higher levels of oxytocin adapt better to their preschool environment and that playing with their parents increases those levels.

Can gratitude buffer the negative effects of stress?

Researchers found that gratitude has a unique stress-buffering effect on both reactions to and recovery from acute psychological stress.

Do mood fluctuations impact confidence in decision-making?

Study reveals that in the healthy adult population, fluctuations of mood do not interfere with confidence in decision-making.

Relationship between sleep bruxism, insomnia and anxiety

Researchers concluded that, although sleep bruxism has no direct association with insomnia, anxiety may act as a bridging factor between these complaints.

Can IQ and socioeconomic status interfere with children's reading fluency?

Researchers found that Intelligence Quotient (IQ) plays no role with reading fluency deficits in children, unlike socioeconomic status.

Do rats recognize musical melodies like humans?

Study reveals that rats showed sensitivity to track harmonic and temporal patterns in music and such sensitivities might be shared across species.

Evening people show enhanced fear acquisition, which may increase the risk to develop anxiety

Researchers resorted to the classic Pavlovian paradigm of fear conditioning to study the association between chronotype and fear responses in healthy humans.

Newborn hearing analysis can predict neurophysiological development at 12 months

Study shows an association between auditory processing and developmental outcomes in infants, crucial for the early detection of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Do expectant fathers and mothers experience pregnancy differently?

A study has shown that there are neural and psychological differences between men and women during pregnancy.

Do psi researchers and skeptics think alike?

Psi phenomena, such as extra-sensory perception and post-mortem survival, that are not explained by known cognitive, neural, or physiological processes, have generated interest and curiosity, but also controversy. Cognitive styles related to evaluating evidence and reaching conclusions are relevant to the controversial nature of psi, as they provide a deeper look into how different groups approach the psi phenomena. The research team, led by Marieta Pehlivanova, compared the cognitive styles, precisely the actively open-minded thinking (AOT) and the need for closure (NFC), of 144 participants divided into four groups: academic psi researchers, lay individuals who believe in psi, academics who are skeptics of psi, and lay individuals who are skeptics. On the one hand, they observed that academic psi researchers demonstrated high levels of AOT, like academic and lay skeptics, and the lay psi group had lower levels of AOT than the other groups. On the other hand, no significant differences in NFC were found among the groups, and academic psi researchers exhibited high psi belief levels comparable to lay believers. These findings suggest that despite their high belief in psi phenomena, psi researchers have a need for certainty and to collect evidence to support reasoning as skeptics. This study was developed within the scope of the research project 212/20 - Comparing cognitive styles among parapsychology researchers, psi-believers, and skeptics, supported by the BIAL Foundation, and published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Psychology, in the article Cognitive styles and psi: psi researchers are more similar to skeptics than to lay believers.

What are the effects of expectation on face perception and its relationship with expertise?

In the scope of the research project 129/20 - Investigating the role of expertise in the predictive coding framework combining time resolved neural and behavioural evidence, supported by the BIAL Foundation, Marie Smith and colleagues, through a behavioural categorization task in which 67 participants learned the probabilistic association between a colour cue and a high and low expertise category (faces and cars respectively), they assessed the individual level of expertise in each category. They found that the perception of the high expertise category (faces) was modulated by expectation. That is, there was a faster response when the faces were expected. Furthermore, in the analysis of neural activity (EEG), there were effects of expectation, with significant decoding of the neural response to expected stimuli. These results support the influence of expectation on face perception, highlight the role of expertise and draw attention to individual variability, which is often neglected. More information is available in the article Effects of expectation on face perception and its association with expertise published in the scientific journal Scientific Reports.

Is the ability to inhibit actions influenced by emotional stimuli?

The ability to inhibit ongoing motor actions is essential to avoid detrimental consequences. Effective inhibition depends mainly on the functioning of several areas, such as the pre-supplementary motor cortex (pre-SMA). The research team, led by Sara Borgomaneri, explored possible changes in the ability of 66 participants to inhibit actions upon facing emotionally negative or neutral human body postures, presented in a stop signal task, before and after the application of a session of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the pre-SMA, the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) and the left primary motor cortex (lM1). They observed a shorter reaction time to emotionally negative stimuli after applying an inhibitory rTMS session to the pre-SMA. On the other hand, there was a shorter reaction time to neutral body postures after administration of rTMS over rIFG. No significant changes were observed after lM1 stimulation. These results support the existence of emotional effects on motor control systems and provide evidence that such effects may involve separate and distinct neural pathways from those associated with motor inhibition in neutral contexts. This study was developed within the scope of the research project 33/22 - The influence of emotions on actions: Boosting brain network plasticity to improve action control, supported by the BIAL Foundation, and published in the scientific journal Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, in article The role of pre-supplementary motor cortex in action control with emotional stimuli: A repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation study.

Grants for Scientific Research 2024/2025: applications are open until August 31

With the aim of encouraging research into the healthy human being, both from the physical and spiritual point of view, the BIAL Foundation now opens a new call for its Grants Programme for Scientific Research 2024/2025 in the areas of Psychophysiology and Parapsychology.

Prémio BIAL de Medicina Clínica 2024: applications are open until August 31

Applications are now open for the 21st edition of the Prémio BIAL de Medicina Clínica. The deadline for applications is August 31.

Maria de Sousa Award 2024: applications are open until May 31

The Maria de Sousa Award aims to award and support young Portuguese researchers, aged 35 or under, with scientific projects in Health Sciences.

BIAL Foundation celebrates its 30th anniversary

Today, the BIAL Foundation celebrates 30 years of patronage activity in three areas with the aim of stimulating new discoveries and contributing to the improvement of human life.

Nuno Grande Doctoral Scholarship 2023 already has a winner

João Moura, a student in the doctoral programme in ICBAS, is the winner of the 2nd edition of the Nuno Grande Doctoral Scholarship with a research project on encephalitis.

14th "Behind and Beyond the Brain" Symposium: registrations now open

Registrations are now open for the 14th "Behind and Beyond the Brain" Symposium, which will debate the theme of "Creativity", from 3 to 6 April, in Porto.

Effects of a web-based mindfulness intervention

In the scope of the research project 104/18 - Effect of mindfulness on EEG brain activity for cognitive and psychological well-being in the elderly, led by Samantha Galluzzi, the research team aimed to assess both short and long-term cognitive, psychological, and physiological outcomes of an adapted 8-week mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) delivered through live web-based videoconferencing among a group of healthy older adults. The findings, published in BMC Geriatrics, in the article Cognitive, psychological, and physiological effects of a web-based mindfulness intervention in older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: an open study indicate that participants improved in various domains, including verbal memory, attention switching and executive functions, interoceptive awareness, and rumination both pre-to-post MBI and at 6-month follow-up (T6). Notably, the most significant changes, with medium effect sizes, were observed in immediate verbal memory and self-regulation in interoceptive awareness, and these improvements were sustained at T6. Furthermore, the study revealed changes in EEG alpha1 and alpha2 activity modulation, which correlated with improvements in attention switching, executive function and rumination.

Does autosuggestion modulate our reality?

Autosuggestion posits that individuals can influence their own mental and physiological states through the repetition of a thought, a so-called suggestion. The research team led by Elena Azañón tested whether autosuggestion can alter participants’ somatosensory perception at the finger. In three separate experiments, participants were asked to modulate the perceived intensity of vibrotactile stimuli at the fingertip through the inner reiteration of the thought that this perception feels very strong (Experiment 1, n = 19) or very weak (Experiments 2, n = 38, and 3, n = 20), while they were asked to report the perceived frequency. Notably, an increase in the intensity of vibrotactile stimuli, keeping the frequency constant, can lead either to an increase or a decrease in its perceived frequency. Whereas the direction of this effect is different between people, it is usually constant within one individual and can therefore be used to test for the effect of autosuggestion in a within-subject design. It was observed that the task to change the perceived intensity of a tactile stimulus via the inner reiteration of a thought modulates tactile frequency perception. This study was conducted in the scope of the research project 296/18 - The power of mind: Altering cutaneous sensations by autosuggestion, supported by the BIAL Foundation, and published in the paper How the inner repetition of a desired perception changes actual tactile perception in the journal Scientific Reports.

Inter-individual differences in fear extinction

In the scope of the research project 85/18 - Role of NT3/TrkC in the regulation of fear, supported by the BIAL Foundation, Mónica Santos and colleagues, using a behavioural model of fear extinction, assessed mice that successfully extinguish fear and those that fail. Inter-individual differences in the ability to extinguish fear have a dual outcome: first on setting the vulnerability to develop anxiety and fear-related disorders, and second on determining the effectiveness of exposure therapy towards patients in this group of disorders. Indeed, fear extinction mechanisms that support exposure therapy principles are often impaired in patients with fear-related disorders. The formation of fear memories and their extinction is dependent on synaptic plasticity events occurring at amygdalar fear and extinction microcircuits. Using the aforesaid model, the team identified a key role for the NT3-TrkC system in fear extinction, through modulation of amygdalar NMDAR composition and synaptic plasticity. This study validates the TrkC pathway as a potential therapeutic target for individuals with fear-related disorders and reveals that combining exposure therapies with drugs that enhance synaptic plasticity may represent a more effective and lasting way of treating anxiety disorders. To know more read the paper The amygdala NT3-TrkC pathway underlies inter-individual differences in fear extinction and related synaptic plasticity published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

The quest of physiological markers for the experience of pain

Researcher: Elia Valentini - Department of Psychology & Centre for Brain Science, University of Essex Summary: The aim of this project is to improve measurement of the human experience of pain by investigating a combination of psychophysical and physiological responses during mild noxious stimulation. More specifically, we want to investigate how sensitive and specific to pain the brain oscillatory responses are. We use EEG as the main technique, but we are keen to collaborate with neuroscientists using fMRI, autonomic measures and brain stimulation as well as with computational neuroscientists. A clinical collaborator would also be very much welcome.

EEG investigation of hypnosis and decision-making

Researcher: Rinaldo Livio Perri - University Niccolò Cusano Rome, Italy Summary: I work in the field of hypnosis and cognitive neuroscience. In particular, I adopt the event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the effect of the hypnotic suggestions on sensory processing and cognitive performance. I am an expert in decision-making and proactive brain processes before the stimulus administration (e.g., the perceptual, prefrontal and premotor readiness during the expectancy stage). I could help colleagues to properly analyze the ERP signal in the pre-stimulus stage of processing. Also, I would be happy to share my EEG data for re-analyzing them in the frequency domain (e.g., wavelet or coherence analysis in the hypnosis research). Feel free to contact me for any question! More information on my papers: https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=-8e_V64AAAAJ&hl=it Possible collaborations: neuroscientist with experience in the EEG frequency analysis Email: perri.rinaldo@gmail.com

Transparent Psi Project - looking for collaborators

Summary: We are running a fully transparent, expert consensus-base multilab replication of Bem’s (2011) experiment 1. The project features state of the art methods to maximize transparency and study integrity. The study involves a computerized experiment taking about 20 minutes per session. Group testing is possible in a computer lab, no specialized equipment needed. Labs are expected to recruit at least 100 participants. Participants will be exposed to images with explicit erotic/sexual content in the experiment. No financial compensation is required for the participants. Data collection is expected to take place in the 2020 fall semester. Every material is provided for ethics/IRB submissions and data collection in English (translation of materials might be necessary by the collaborators). The study is pre-registered and the manuscript is accepted in principle for publication in the journal Royal Society Open Science. All collaborators who meet the minimum sample size criterion will get authorship on this paper reporting the results of the replication study. More information in the preprint: https://psyarxiv.com/uwk7y/ Indicate interest in the collaboration via the following form: https://tinyurl.com/tpp-labs With any question contact the lead investigator: Dr. Zoltan Kekecs, kekecs.zoltan@gmail.com

Cognitive control and learning

Researcher: Ignacio Obeso, Ph.D. / CINAC - HM Puerta del Sur Summary: The aim of our projects is to understand the behavioral and neural mechanisms used to learn how humans establish adaptive behaviour in changing contexts. More specifically, we want to decipher how stopping abilities are initially learned and later executed under automatic control. We use task-related fMRI, brain stimulation and clinical models to test our predictions in laboratory settings as well as online home-based paradigms. Possible collaborations: computational scientist Email contact: i.obesomartin@gmail.com https://iobesomartin.wixsite.com/cognitivecontrol