Search

Improvement in performance following cognitive training is known to be further enhanced when coupled with brain stimulation. Here we ask whether training-induced changes can be maintained long term and, crucially, whether they can extend to other related but untrained skills. We trained overall 40 human participants on a simple and well established paradigm assessing the ability to discriminate numerosity-or the number of items in a set-which is thought to rely on an "approximate number sense" (ANS) associated with parietal lobes. We coupled training with parietal stimulation in the form of transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS), a noninvasive technique that modulates neural activity. This yielded significantly better and longer lasting improvement (up to 16 weeks post-training) of the precision of the ANS compared with cognitive training in absence of stimulation, stimulation in absence of cognitive training, and cognitive training coupled to stimulation to a control site (motor areas). Critically, only ANS improvement induced by parietal tRNSTraining transferred to proficiency in other parietal lobe-based quantity judgment, i.e., time and space discrimination, but not to quantity-unrelated tasks measuring attention, executive functions, and visual pattern recognition. These results indicate that coupling intensive cognitive training with tRNS to critical brain regions resulted not only in the greatest and longer lasting improvement of numerosity discrimination, but importantly in this enhancement being transferable when trained and untrained abilities are carefully chosen to share common cognitive and neuronal components. © 2013 the authors.

Objective: Bodily self-recognition is one aspect of our ability to distinguish between self and others and is central to effective socialization. Here we explored the influence of emotional body postures on bodily self-processing in typically developing (TD) as well as in high-functioning ASD children. Method: Subjects’ bodies were photographed while expressing endogenously- (self-generated, Experiment 1) or exogenously-driven body emotions (imitated upon request, Experiment 2). Postures conveying positive (happiness), negative (fearful) and neutral valences were used. These pictures served as stimuli in a visual matching-to-sample task with self and others’ body-images. Results: A similar self-versus-others advantage was found in TD and in ASD children, since participants were faster with stimuli representing their own than others’ body. This “self-advantage” was modulated by self-expressed emotional body postures being present with pictures of happy and neutral, but not fearful body images. This modulation was stronger when emotional postures were endogenously rather than exogenously driven. Moreover, faster responses were observed for others’ fearful rather than happy or neutral body images in both groups. Conclusions: The bodily self-advantage is a low-level function present in typically developing (TD) and in high-functioning ASD children. Body postures, especially when they are endogenously generated, modulate the self and others’ body processing. The advantage for processing others’ fearful, comparing to others’ happy and neutral, body postures may have played a crucial evolutionary role for species survival.