Progetti di ricerca

The project aims to evaluate the diagnostic validity in early primary school years of a computer-based, Reading-Free Screening Tool (RFST) for Developmental Dyslexia (DD) and other reading difficulties, which we have recently developed. The project is conceived as a longitudinal… Leggi tutto study covering a range of behavioural, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging indices, to identify neurocognitive markers capable of detecting risks and signs of DD and other reading difficulties before they become clinically manifest, thus permitting more timely interventions in the early phases of the learning process. The focus on a reading-free assessment of the neurocognitive prerequisites of literacy is motivated by the necessity to have a screening tool that can be equally applied in young monolingual children and in minority language children (MLC) with diverse language origins. This is of fundamental importance, since DD may be initially confused with subtler reading difficulties that can generally resolve if promptly treated, as may be the case with MLC. We therefore need new screening tools that can effectively distinguish neurodevelopmental reading deficits, as in DD, from reading difficulties due to environmental and linguistic factors. These objectives will be achieved by the collaboration of three units. We will collect multiple cohorts of primary school children who will be longitudinally assessed by means of the RFST in grades 2 and 3, and will also undergo a standardised clinical evaluation of reading skills in grade 3 to discriminate typical from atypical readers. Unit 1 will sample 30 children with familial risk for DD, and collect additional behavioural and neuroimaging measures; Unit 2 will sample 100 children, either monolingual or MLC, and validate additional reading-free tasks; Unit 3 will sample 30 prematurely born children, collecting neuroimaging measures. Units 1 and 3 will also jointly collect 30 control children born at term and without familial risk for DD. These diverse populations cover a broad range of risks for reading difficulties, and reflect the added value of the project, aiming to elucidate the multifactorial nature of reading deficits along a neurodevelopmental continuum. Cohort-specific and pooled analyses of the multivariate longitudinal data will leverage semi-automatic methods able to classify typical versus atypical readers at grade 3, based on RFST indices and other neurobehavioural and neuroimaging measures at grade 2. We thus aim to identify a set of discriminant neurocognitive markers of DD and other reading disorders, hence providing evidence-based grounding for the predictive power of our RFST. Discriminant RFST tasks will be implemented in a web-app (based on preliminary work by Units 1 and 3), which will be released and tested during the project, aiming for a freely available tool that can support primary school teachers and clinicians in the early recognition of children at risk of developing reading difficulties.

Neuroaesthetics investigates the neural underpinnings involved in the aesthetic experience, which may transpire from harmonious interaction of neural systems linked to sensory-motor, emotion-valuation, and meaning-knowledge processes (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2014; Nadal & Skov, 2015; Pelowski et al., 2016). The default… Leggi tutto mode and executive control networks, partly comprised of frontal-striatal circuits (Boot et al., 2017), have been suggested to play a significant role in the appreciation and judgment of visual artwork (Belfi et al., 2019; Cela-Conde et al., 2009, 2013; Vessel et al., 2019), and their interplay may synchronize neural systems engendering the aesthetic experience via top-down and bottom-up processes (Pelowski et al., 2017). Likewise, the posterior cerebellum has been posited to work as a predictive mechanism that matches internal schematic representations with the external environment in a regulatory fashion by integrating top-down and bottom-up processes to efficiently navigate one’s environment (Cattaneo et al., 2021; Van Overwalle, 2020), which may be essential in modulating reward and emotion throughout the aesthetic experience (Kesner, 2014; Van de Cruys & Wagemans, 2011). The predictive posterior cerebellum facilitates executive control/functioning, emotional (i.e., affective) processes, and social cognition via functional cerebral-cerebellar networks (Cattaneo et al 2021; Van Overwalle, 2020). Art-based content may recruit cerebral-cerebellar networks as trainings in art and visual design showed positive associations between cerebellar and prefrontal engagement and improved creative thinking (Saggar et al., 2017; Schlegel et al., 2015). Posterior cerebellar regions have been shown to be involved in the aesthetic appreciation and/or judgment of buildings (Kirk et al., 2009), faces (Kedia et al., 2014), images (Ishizu & Zeki, 2017), paintings (Ishizu & Zeki, 2013; Mizokami et al., 2014), and sculptures (Di Dio et al., 2011); however, empirical research has generally neglected further discussion about the role of the cerebellum within the visual aesthetic experience. Importantly, non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) sheds light on the causal role of neural areas within the aesthetic experience (Cattaneo, 2020). Moreover, the medial regions of cerebellum have been associated with the recognition and processing of emotions in humans (Adamaszek et al., 2017). Anodal and cathodal cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (ctDCS) medially positioned over the posterior cerebellum improved the emotional recognition of facial expressions (Ferrucci et al., 2012) while repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the posterior cerebellum disrupted the emotional recognition of faces (Ferrari et al., 2018) and bodies (Ferrari et al., 2019). In consideration of correlational and causative evidence, medial regions of the posterior cerebellum may play a role in the appreciation and affective appraisal and of figural visual artwork.