The experience of owning a body is built upon the integration of exteroceptive, interoceptive, and proprioceptive signals. Recently, it has been suggested that motor signals could be particularly important in producing the feeling of body part ownership. One thus may hypothesize that the strength of this feeling may not be spatially uniform; rather, it could vary as a function of the degree by which different body parts are involved in motor behavior. Given that our dominant hand plays a leading role (...) in our motor behavior, we hypothesized that it could be more strongly associated with one’s self compared to its non-dominant counterpart. To explore whether this possible asymmetry manifests as a stronger implicit association of the right hand with the self, we administered the Implicit Association Test to a group of 70 healthy individuals. To control whether this asymmetric association is human-body specific, we further tested whether a similar asymmetry characterizes the association between a right animal body part with the concept of self, in an independent sample of subjects. Our results revealed a linear relationship between the magnitude of the implicit association between the right hand with the self and the subject’s handedness. In detail, the strength of this association increased as a function of hand preference. Critically, the handedness score did not predict the association of the right-animal body part with the self. These findings suggest that, in healthy individuals, the dominant and non-dominant hands are differently perceived at an implicit level as belonging to the self. We argue that such asymmetry may stem from the different roles that the two hands play in our adaptive motor behavior. (shrink)

Child trauma plays an important role in the etiology of Bordeline Personality Disorder. Of all traumas, sexual trauma is the most common, severe and most associated with receiving a BPD diagnosis when adult. Etiologic models posit sexual abuse as a prognostic factor in BPD. Here we apply machine learning using Multiple Kernel Regression to the Magnetic Resonance Structural Images of 20 BPD and 13 healthy control to see whether their brain predicts five sources of traumas: sex abuse, emotion neglect, emotional (...) abuse, physical neglect, physical abuse. We also applied the same analysis to predict symptom severity in five domains: affective, cognitive, impulsivity, interpersonal for BPD patients only. Results indicate that CTQ sexual trauma is predicted by a set of areas including the amygdala, the Heschl area, the Caudate, the Putamen, and portions of the Cerebellum in BPD patients only. Importantly, interpersonal problems only in BPD patients were predicted by a set of areas including temporal lobe and cerebellar regions. Notably, sexual trauma and interpersonal problems were not predicted by structural features in matched healthy controls. This finding may help elucidate the brain circuit affected by traumatic experiences and connected with interpersonal problems BPD suffer from. (shrink)

Risky behaviour may be associated with visceral experiences, such as increased heart rate. Previous studies examining the relationship between perception of such signals (interoception) and risk-taking typically used behavioural tasks with potential for monetary reward. This approach may be less informative for understanding general risk propensity. In addition, such research does not usually consider the varied ways individuals engage with interoceptive signals. However, examining these different forms of engagement may help us understand how subjective experience of interoception influences risk-taking. As (...) such, we performed two surveys (n = 471, primarily young adults) to examine the relationship between self-reported engagement with interoceptive signals (measured using the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness) and a generalised measure of risk propensity (the General Risk Propensity Scale). Results indicated that different ways of interpreting or engaging with interoceptive signals were differentially associated with risk propensity. In particular, they provide preliminary evidence that those with the ability to ignore or not worry about visceral signals when they are uncomfortable display greater risk propensity (and these effects may possibly be gender-specific). (shrink)

Background: Cinematherapy and video treatments are artistic therapeutic techniques by which the individuals are exposed to their psycho-physical difficulties through the stories of the characters on the screen who are coping with the same issues that the patients are. Although these techniques are increasingly common within modern art therapies, there are neither comprehensive classifications of the different approaches nor agreement on their effectiveness. We performed a scoping review, describing different methodological approaches and outcome measures in cinematherapy and video treatments.Methodology: We (...) searched articles in PubMed, PsycINFO and Google Scholar. We included: articles in which subjects were treated for their difficulties with videos or films, articles written in English. Review articles and papers describing a research protocol without data collection were not included.Results: We analyzed 38 studies. Thirty-six reported a positive effect of the treatment. Seven studies used classical cinematherapy, adopting a qualitative approach to measure the therapy outcome. Thirty-one studies used different video treatments, 8 of which were defined as randomized controlled trials with specific objective therapy outcomes. Studies were mainly focused on behavioral and psychological difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorders and Schizophrenia.Conclusion: Studies using video treatments more often rely upon structured experimental designs; on the contrary, those who used classical cinematherapy produced descriptive results. A more standardized methodological approach in terms of experimental design, procedure, and objective outcome measure is needed to provide evidence on the effectiveness of these techniques, promoting its application in the clinical field. (shrink)

Individuals who deviate from social norms by committing crimes may have reduced facial emotion recognition abilities. Nevertheless, a specific category of offenders – i.e. organised crime (OC) members – is characterised by hierarchically organised social networks and a tendency to manipulate others to reach their illicit goals. Since recognising emotions is crucial to building social networks, OC members may be more skilled in recognising the facial emotion expressions of others to use this information for their criminal purposes. Evidence of a (...) difference between OC and non-organised crime (NOC) offenders in terms of facial emotion recognition is still lacking. To fill this gap in the literature, we tested 50 OC, 50 NOC offenders, and 50 non-offender controls for their ability to identify six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise). All participants underwent a cognitive and psychological evaluation to avoid alternative explanations. Results show that OC members were more able to detect the expression of fear in others as compared to NOC. We interpreted this finding in light of the social context and the behavioural criminal attitude of OC members. (shrink)