Visual objects approaching the body modulate subsequent somatosensory processing at 4 months of age.

We asked whether, in the first year of life, the infant brain can support the dynamic crossmodal interactions between vision and somatosensation that are required to represent peripersonal space. Infants aged 4 (n = 20, 9 female) and 8 (n = 20, 10 female) months were presented with a visual object that moved towards their body or receded away from it. This was presented in the bottom half of the screen and not fixated upon by the infants, who were instead focusing on an attention getter at the top of the screen. The visual moving object then disappeared and was followed by a vibrotactile stimulus occurring later in time and in a different location in space (on their hands). The 4-month-olds' somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) were enhanced when tactile stimuli were preceded by unattended approaching visual motion, demonstrating that the dynamic visual-somatosensory cortical interactions underpinning representations of the body and peripersonal space begin early in the first year of life. Within the 8-month-olds' sample, SEPs were increasingly enhanced by (unexpected) tactile stimuli following receding visual motion as age in days increased, demonstrating changes in the neural underpinnings of the representations of peripersonal space across the first year of life.

Deontological Guilt and Disgust Sensitivity Modulate Moral Behaviour.

OBJECTIVE: Deontological Guilt (DG), and Altruistic Guilt (AG) emerge from the appraisal of violating an internalized rule or an altruistic principle, respectively. DG is strictly connected with Disgust Sensitivity and plays a key role in the development and maintenance of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Previous studies investigated how DG affects responses to hypothetical moral dilemmas, however how DG and Disgust Sensitivity interact modulating moral behavior is still unknown. METHODS: STUDY 1. 46 healthy participants performed an ecological paradigm in which people can spontaneously decide to lie to obtain a reward (egoistic lie) or give it away (altruistic lie) after three emotional inductions: DG, AG or neutral. Furthermore, OCD traits, Morality, Guilt Propensity and Disgust Sensitivity were assessed by means of questionnaires. STUDY 2. 27 participants from the original sample were retested during the COVID-19 lockdown in Italy to ascertain whether the pandemic modified traits related to morality, disgust, guilt or OCD symptoms and whether these changes modulated moral behavior (measured by a task in which cheating was associated to higher pay-offs). RESULTS: STUDY 1. Compared to the neutral, after the DG induction participants produced less altruistic and more egoistic lies. This effect was stronger in participants with high Disgust Sensitivity. STUDY 2. During the COVID-19 lockdown participants became more sensitive to the Authority pillar of the Moral Foundations and more sensitive to Disgust: this increment in deontological morality affected (im) moral behavior depending on changes in Disgust Sensitivity. CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest that people with high Disgust Sensitivity are more affected by deontological inductions which translate to higher immorality, supposedly by lowering their moral self-image. These results might have important clinical implications as they suggest that addressing Disgust Sensitivity in therapy, might also decrease the effect of guilt on patients' behavior.

Top-down Inhibitory Motor Control Is Preserved in Adults with Developmental Coordination Disorder.

Two paradigms were employed to disentangle information processing from executive motor inhibition in adults with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). Choice Reaction and Stop Signal Tasks were compared between 13 adults fulfilling DSM-5 DCD criteria and 42 typically developing adults. Additional analyses included 16 probable DCD (pDCD) participants, who had motor difficulties but did not fulfil DSM-5 criteria. Analyses employed frequentist and Bayesian modeling. While DCD+pDCD showed slower reaction times and difficulty initiating Go responses, no impairments in Stop actions were found. These findings indicated no executive deficit in DCD, suggesting that previous results may be explained by inefficient information processing.