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Covert measures of information-processing are valuable tools to support assessment of patients' disorders of consciousness because of their potential in revealing what seem to be hidden. Those measures allow to overcome some limitations of traditional behavioural methods, which are often biased by difficulties in detecting reliable patients' responses. Therefore, we aimed at exploring patterns of psychophysiological responses (electroencephalography - EEG, skin conductance level - SCL, skin conductance response - SCR, heart rate - HR) marking potentially-preserved processing of personally-relevant stimuli in a sample of VS patients. In particular, we compared the processing of own vs. other names due to the intrinsic salience, relevance, and familiarity of such stimuli. Analysis of electroencephalography, skin conductance and heart rate modulations highlighted a consistent pattern of increased skin conductance and heart rate measures in response to patients' own name with respect to other names. Further, we observed increased delta and decreased alpha activity over frontal areas in response to their own name with respect to other names. Own-name stimuli might preserve their peculiar qualification even after severe brain damage and might call on residual attention orientation and preferred coding resources, suggesting the existence of partly preserved information-processing pathways that extends beyond basic auditory sensory processing.

Given the intrinsic complexity of cognitive and affective processes affecting how people reason about taxes and their decisions to be compliant with such social duty, we aimed at exploring those latent processes by combining the analysis of their central and peripheral physiological correlates. We asked participants to make realistic economic decisions concerning tax-payment and manipulated the social vs. individual decisional frame. In addition, we took into account the potential role of tax-compliance trait. Thirty self-employed professionals took part in the study and completed a public good game while their autonomic (skin conductance - SC - and heart rate - HR) and neural brain (electroencephalography - EEG) activities were recorded. The analysis of physiological responses during the feedback phase - where participants could be presented or not with a fiscal audit - highlighted: (i) increased tonic SC levels and theta activity in the social condition than in the individual one; (ii) increased HR values when a fiscal audit did not take place, especially in participants who presented an enforced tax-compliance trait. Present findings support the idea that classic economic theories of tax behaviour developed under the assumption that taxpayers act as rational and individualist agents do not provide a comprehensive account for the decision-making process. They add to available evidence highlighting the contribution of psychological and social-affective variables to individuals' decision-making processes to pay or evade taxes and to their appraisal of the consequences of such choice, as suggested by the 'slippery slope' framework.

Both Williams syndrome (WS) and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are associated with unusual auditory phenotypes with respect to processing vocal and musical stimuli, which may be shaped by the atypical social profiles that characterize the syndromes. Autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity to vocal and musical emotional stimuli was examined in 12 children with WS, 17 children with ASD, and 20 typically developing (TD) children, and related to their level of social functioning. The results of this small-scale study showed that after controlling for between-group differences in cognitive ability, all groups showed similar emotion identification performance across conditions. Additionally, in ASD, lower autonomic reactivity to human voice, and in TD, to musical emotion, was related to more normal social functioning. Compared to TD, both clinical groups showed increased arousal to vocalizations. A further result highlighted uniquely increased arousal to music in WS, contrasted with a decrease in arousal in ASD and TD. The ASD and WS groups exhibited arousal patterns suggestive of diminished habituation to the auditory stimuli. The results are discussed in the context of the clinical presentation of WS and ASD., (© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Williams syndrome (WS) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are associated with atypical social-emotional functioning. Affective visual stimuli were used to assess autonomic reactivity and emotion identification, and the social responsiveness scale was used to determine the level social functioning in children with WS and ASD contrasted with typical development (TD), to examine syndrome-specific and syndrome-general features. Children with ASD exhibited the highest arousal in response to faces, with a lack of difference in autonomic sensitivity across different emotional expressions, unlike in WS and TD. The WS group demonstrated unique deficits in identifying neutral stimuli. While autonomic responsivity to neutral faces was associated with social functioning in all children, converging profiles characterized children with WS contrasted with TD and ASD.