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The neurocognitive bases of social cognition have been framed in terms of representing others’ actions through the mirror system and their mental states via the mentalizing network. Alongside representing another person’s actions or mental states, however, social cognitive processing is also shaped by their (mis)match with one’s own corresponding states. Here, we addressed the distinction between representing others’ states through the action observation or mentalizing networks (i.e. representational processing) and detecting the extent to which such states align with one’s own ones (i.e. relational processing, mediated by social conflict). We took a meta-analytic approach to unveil the neural bases of both relational and representational processing by focusing on previously reported brain activations from functional magnetic resonance imaging studies using false-belief and action observation tasks. Our findings suggest that relational processing for belief and action states involves, respectively, the left and right temporo-parietal junction, likely contributing to self-other differentiation. Moreover, distinct sectors of the posterior fronto-medial cortex support social conflict processing for belief and action, possibly through the inhibition of conflictual representations. These data might pave the way for further studies addressing social conflict as an important component of normal and pathological processing, and inform the design of rehabilitative treatments for social deficits.

Body language is a powerful form of non-verbal communication providing important information about the emotions and intentions of others. The ability to infer other's emotions from their bodily movements and postures recruits an extended network in the brain that encompasses both cortical and subcortical regions. In this chapter, we review recent evidence suggesting that the cerebellum is a critical node of this network. Specifically, we present convergent findings from patients', neuroimaging and non-invasive brain stimulation studies that have shown that the cerebellum is involved in both biological motion perception and in discrimination of bodily emotional expressions. We discuss the potential underlying mechanisms that drive the recruitment of the sensorimotor (anterior) and cognitive (posterior) cerebellum in inferring others' emotions through their bodily movements and postures and how the cerebellum may exert these functions within different cortico-cerebellar and limbic-cerebellar networks dedicated to body language perception.

The role of the posterior cerebellum in social cognition is well established; however, it is still unclear whether different cerebellar subregions contribute to different social cognitive processes by exerting specific functions. Here we employed transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in male and female healthy humans to test the hypothesis of the existence of a medial-to-lateral gradient in the functional organization of the posterior cerebellum, according to which the phylogenetically newer cerebellar hemispheres are involved in tasks requiring higher-level social inferences whereas vermal/medial sectors are involved in basic perceptual emotional mechanisms. We found that interfering via TMS with activity of the medial cerebellum significantly impaired basic emotional recognition/discrimination. In turn, only TMS over the lateral cerebellum affected a task requiring recognizing an emotion considering the social context in which it was experienced. Overall, our data support the existence of a medial-to-lateral gradient in the posterior cerebellum, with medial sectors supporting basic emotion recognition and lateral sectors being recruited when the task taps on higher inferential processing/mentalizing. Interestingly, the contribution of the cerebellum in these different processes seems to be restricted to negative emotional stimuli.Significance Statement:The cerebellum has been recently recognized as a critical component of the social brain, however, the functional topography of this structure in relation to social and emotional processes is still debated. By adopting a causative approach through the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation, the present study critically insights into the functional organization of the posterior cerebellum by testing the hypothesis of a medial-to-lateral gradient that reflects increasing complexity of social cognitive processes. Our findings demonstrate that lateral and medial cerebellar regions exert partially distinguishable functions in the social cognitive domain, with the medial cerebellum that mainly mediates basic perceptual emotional mechanisms while the lateral cerebellum, although supporting more basic functions, further subserves higher-level social operations.

Evidence suggests that the posterior cerebellum is involved in emotional processing. Specific mechanisms by which the cerebellum contributes to the perception of and reaction to the emotional state of others are not well-known. It is likely that perceived emotions trigger anticipatory/preparatory motor changes. However, the extent to which the cerebellum modulates the activity of the motor cortex to contribute to emotional processing has not been directly investigated. In this study, we assessed whether the activity of the posterior cerebellum influences the modulation of motor cortical excitability in response to emotional stimuli. To this end, we transiently disrupted the neural activity of the left posterior cerebellum using 1Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and examined its effect on motor cortical excitability witnessed during emotional face processing (in comparison to the effects of sham rTMS). Motor excitability was measured as TMS-based motor evoked potentials (MEPs) recorded from bilateral first dorsal interosseous (FDI) muscles during the viewing of negative emotional (i.e. fearful) and neutral facial expressions. In line with previous evidence, we found that MEP amplitude was increased during the viewing of fearful compared to neutral faces. Critically, when left posterior cerebellar activity was transiently inhibited with 1Hz rTMS, we observed a reduction in amplitude of MEPs recorded from the contralateral (right) motor cortex during the viewing of emotional (but not neutral) faces. In turn, inhibition of the left posterior cerebellum did not affect the amplitude of MEPs recorded from the ipsilateral motor cortex. Our findings suggest that the posterolateral (left) cerebellum modulates motor cortical response to negative emotional stimuli and may serve as an interface between limbic, cognitive, and motor systems.

Humans tend to prefer order to disorder. Orderly environments may provide individuals with comfort due to predictability, allowing a more efficient interaction with objects. Accordingly, a disorderly environment may elicit a tendency to restore order. This order restoration tendency may be observed physiologically as modulation within corticospinal excitability; the latter has been previously associated with motor preparation. To test these hypothesized physiological indices of order restoration, we measured possible changes in corticospinal excitability, as reflected by the amplitude of motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) elicited by single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the primary motor cortex while participants viewed ordered and disordered rooms. We found that images depicting disorderly environments suppressed excitability within the corticospinal tract, in line with prior findings that motor preparation is typically associated with decreased corticospinal excitability. Interestingly, this pattern was particularly evident in individuals that displayed subclinical levels of obsessive-compulsive traits. Thus, a disorderly environment may move the motor system to restore a disorderly environment into a more orderly and predictable environment, and preparation for “order” may be observed on a sensorimotor basis.

Visual processing of human movements is critical for adaptive social behavior. Cerebellar activations have been observed during biological motion discrimination in prior neuroimaging studies, and cerebellar lesions may be detrimental for this task. However, whether the cerebellum plays a causal role in biological motion discrimination has never been tested. Here, we addressed this issue in three different experiments by interfering with the posterior cerebellar lobe using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) during a biological discrimination task. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found that TMS delivered at onset of the visual stimuli over the vermis (vermal lobule VI), but not over the left cerebellar hemisphere (left lobule VI/Crus I), interfered with participants’ ability to distinguish biological from scrambled motion compared to stimulation of a control site (vertex). Interestingly, when stimulation was delivered at a later time point (300 ms after stimulus onset), participants performed worse when TMS was delivered over the left cerebellar hemisphere compared to the vermis and the vertex (Experiment 3). Our data show that the posterior cerebellum is causally involved in biological motion discrimination and suggest that different sectors of the posterior cerebellar lobe may contribute to the task at different time points.

Noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial electrical stimulation (tES), are largely employed in cognitive neuroscience to investigate the brain–behavior relationship. During the last decade, non-invasive brain stimulation techniques have been increasingly employed in the field of neuroaesthetics research to shed light on the possible causal role of different brain regions contributing to aesthetic appreciation. This chapter provides a synthetic description of mechanisms of actions of TMS and different types of tES, and reviews recent NIBS studies that have shed light on the neural underpinning of aesthetic evaluation of (visual) artworks. The chapter also considers methodological limitations of the reviewed studies and the future potential for non-invasive brain stimulation to significantly contribute to the understanding of the neural bases of visual aesthetic experiences.

Patients with Parkinson disease (PD) may show impairments in the social perception. Whether these deficits have been consistently reported, it remains to be clarified which brain alterations subtend them. To this aim, we conducted a neuroimaging meta-analysis to compare the brain activity during social perception in patients with PD versus healthy controls. Our results show that PD patients exhibit a significantly decreased response in the basal ganglia (putamen and pallidum) and a trend toward decreased activity in the mirror system, particularly in the left parietal cortex (inferior parietal lobule and intraparietal sulcus). This reduced activation may be tied to a disruption of cognitive resonance mechanisms and may thus constitute the basis of impaired others’ representations underlying action and emotion perception. We also found increased activation in the posterior cerebellum in PD, although only in a within-group analysis and not in comparison with healthy controls. This cerebellar activation may reflect compensatory mechanisms, an aspect that deserves further investigation. We discuss the clinical implications of our findings for the development of novel social skill training programs for PD patients.

Among the brain regions involved in the aesthetic evaluation of paintings, the prefrontal cortex seems to play a pivotal role. In particular, consistent neuroimaging evidence indicates that activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (mainly in the left hemisphere) and in medial and orbital sectors of the prefrontal cortex is linked to viewing aesthetically pleasing images. In this study, we focused on the contribution of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in mediating aesthetic decisions about paintings. We found that enhancing excitability in this region via anodal tDCS led participants to judge paintings as more beautiful. Although significant, the effects were moderate, possibly due to the neutral affective value of the artworks we used, suggesting that activity in mPFC may be critically dependent on the affective impact of the paintings., This work was supported by a PRIN Grant (2015WXAXJF) by Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research to Z.C and by Mondino Foundation “Ricerca Corrente” funds.

Deaf individuals may compensate for the lack of the auditory input by showing enhanced capacities in certain visual tasks. Here we assessed whether this also applies to recognition of emotions expressed by bodily and facial cues. In Experiment 1, we compared deaf participants and hearing controls in a task measuring recognition of the six basic emotions expressed by actors in a series of video-clips in which either the face, the body, or both the face and body were visible. In Experiment 2, we measured the weight of body and face cues in conveying emotional information when intense genuine emotions are expressed, a situation in which face expressions alone may have ambiguous valence. We found that deaf individuals were better at identifying disgust and fear from body cues (Experiment 1) and in integrating face and body cues in case of intense negative genuine emotions (Experiment 2). Our findings support the capacity of deaf individuals to compensate for the lack of the auditory input enhancing perceptual and attentional capacities in the spared modalities, showing that this capacity extends to the affective domain.

Interpersonal space (IPS) is the area surrounding our own bodies in which we interact comfortably with other individuals. During the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping larger IPS than usual, along with wearing a face mask, is one of the most effective measures to slow down the COVID-19 outbreak. Here, we explore the contribution of actual and perceived risk of contagion and anxiety levels in regulating our preferred social distance from other people during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. In this study, 1293 individuals from six Italian regions with different levels of actual risk of infection participated in an online survey assessing their perceived risk to be infected, level of anxiety and IPS. Two tasks were adopted as measures of interpersonal distance: the Interpersonal Visual Analogue Scale and a questionnaire evaluating interpersonal distance with and without face mask. The results showed that the IPS regulation was affected by how people subjectively perceived COVID-19 risk and the related level of anxiety, not by actual objective risk. This clarifies that the role of threat in prompting avoidant behaviors expressed in increased IPS does not merely reflect environmental events but rather how they are subjectively experienced and represented.

Congenital or acquired cerebellum alterations are associated with a complex pattern of motor, cognitive and social disorders. These disturbances may reflect the involvement of the cerebellum in generating and updating the internal models that sub-serve-the prediction of sensory events. Here, we tested whether the cerebellar involvement in using contextual expectations to interpret ambiguous sensory sceneries is specific for social actions or also extends to physical events. We applied anodic, cathodic and sham cerebellar transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (ctDCS) to modulate the performance of an adult sample in two tasks requiring the prediction of social actions or moving shapes. For both tasks, in an earlier implicit-learning phase (familiarization), we manipulated the probability of co-occurrence between a particular action/shape and contextual elements, which could provide either strongly or moderately informative expectations. The use of these expectations was then tested when participants had to predict the unfolding of temporally occluded videos, in situations of perceptual uncertainty (testing). Results showed that in the testing, but not in the familiarization phase, cathodic as compared to anodic and sham ctDCS hindered participants' sensitivity in predicting actions embedded in strongly, but not moderately, informative contexts. Conversely, anodic as compared to sham ctDCS boosted the prediction of actions embedded in moderately, but not strongly, informative contexts. We observed no ctDCS effects for the shape prediction task, thus pointing to a specific involvement of the cerebellum in forming expectations related to social events. Our results encourage the exploration of rehabilitative effects of ctDCS in patients with social perception deficits.

Does V5, a brain region involved in the perception of movement, contribute to the aesthetic appreciation of artworks that depict movement? In the study under discussion, the authors asked participants to view abstract and representational artworks depicting motion. While they judged the sense of motion conveyed by the artworks and how much they liked them, the authors delivered transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over V5. They found that TMS over V5 reduced the sense of motion participants perceived and reduced how much participants liked the abstract paintings. These results show, first, that V5 is involved in extracting implied motion information even when the object whose motion is implied is not real. Second, they show that V5 is involved in extracting implied motion information even in the absence of any object, as in the abstract paintings. Finally, they show that activity in V5 plays a causal role in the appreciation of abstract art.

The effects of online Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) can qualitatively vary as a function of brain state. For example, TMS intensities which normally impair performance can have a facilitatory effect if the targeted neuronal representations are in a suppressed state. These phenomena have been explained in terms of the existence of distinct facilitatory and suppressive ranges as a function of TMS intensity which are shifted by changes in neural excitability. We tested this model by applying TMS at a low (60 % of phosphene threshold) or high (120 % of phosphene threshold) intensity during a priming paradigm. Our results show that state-dependent TMS effects vary qualitatively as a function of TMS intensity. Whereas the application of TMS at 120 % of participants’ phosphene threshold impaired performance on fully congruent trials (in effect, reducing the benefit of priming), TMS applied at a lower intensity (60 % of phosphene threshold), facilitated performance on congruent trials. These results demonstrate that behavioral effects of TMS reflect a nonlinear interaction between initial activation state and TMS intensity. They also provide support for the existence of facilitatory/suppressive ranges of TMS effects which shift when neural excitability changes.

While the discussion on the foundations of social understanding mainly revolves around the notions of empathy, affective mentalizing, and cognitive mentalizing, their degree of overlap versus specificity is still unclear. We took a meta‐analytic approach to unveil the neural bases of cognitive mentalizing, affective mentalizing, and empathy, both in healthy individuals and pathological conditions characterized by social deficits such as schizophrenia and autism. We observed partially overlapping networks for cognitive and affective mentalizing in the medial prefrontal, posterior cingulate, and lateral temporal cortex, while empathy mainly engaged fronto‐insular, somatosensory, and anterior cingulate cortex. Adjacent process‐specific regions in the posterior lateral temporal, ventrolateral, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex might underpin a transition from abstract representations of cognitive mental states detached from sensory facets to emotionally‐charged representations of affective mental states. Altered mentalizing‐related activity involved distinct sectors of the posterior lateral temporal cortex in schizophrenia and autism, while only the latter group displayed abnormal empathy related activity in the amygdala. These data might inform the design of rehabilitative treatments for social cognitive deficits., The relationship between affective Theory of Mind (ToM), cognitive ToM, and empathy is still unclear. We addressed this issue via coordinate‐based meta‐analyses of previous fMRI data. Empathy and mentalizing engaged frontoinsular and classical ToM nodes, respectively. Adjacent regions might underpin graded transitions between ToM and mentalizing. Autistic and schizophrenic patients displayed specific patterns of altered activity.

The lateral occipital cortex (LO) has been shown to code the presence of both vertical and horizontal visual symmetry in dot patterns. However, the specific time window at which LO is causally involved in symmetry encoding has not been investigated. This was assessed using a chronometric transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) approach. Participants were presented with a series of dot configurations and instructed to judge whether they were symmetric along the vertical axis or not while receiving a double pulse of TMS over either the right LO (rLO) or the vertex (baseline) at different time windows (ranging from 50 ms to 290 ms from stimulus onset). We found that TMS delivered over the rLO significantly decreased participants' accuracy in discriminating symmetric from non-symmetric patterns when TMS was applied between 130 ms and 250 ms from stimulus onset, suggesting that LO is causally involved in symmetry perception within this time window. These findings confirm and extend prior neuroimaging and ERP evidence by demonstrating not only that LO is causally involved in symmetry encoding but also that its contribution occurs in a relatively large temporal window, at least in tasks requiring fast discrimination of mirror symmetry in briefly (75 ms) presented patterns as in our study.

Keeping a large interpersonal space (IPS) is one of the most important measures to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. The IPS is automatically modulated according to primary affiliation and defence needs aimed at protecting our physical and psychological well-being. Through a multicentric online survey (1293 respondents) in six Italian regions during the lockdown (April-May 2020), we investigated the psychological and situational factors that influenced the regulation of IPS and psychological well-being. The results showed that the IPS was modulated according to perceived rather than actual risk of COVID-19 infection. This perception was influenced by institutional communication and citizen satisfaction in local Healthcare Systems. Higher levels of anxiety, stress and feeling of insecurity, exacerbated by situational factors linked to the context of life, led to an increase in IPS at the expense of psychological well-being. Instead, the possibility to go out and seeing other people wearing a face-mask reduced the IPS. The findings provide useful insights into pandemic management to bring human behaviour in line with the recommendations of public health experts.

The human cerebral cortex is asymmetrically organized with hemispheric lateralization pervading nearly all neural systems of the brain. Whether the lack of normal visual development affects hemispheric specialization subserving the deployment of visuospatial attention asymmetries is controversial. In principle, indeed, the lack of early visual experience may affect the lateralization of spatial functions, and the blind may rely on a different sensory input compared to the sighted. In this review article, we thus present a current state-of-the-art synthesis of empirical evidence concerning the effects of visual deprivation on the lateralization of various spatial processes (i.e., including line bisection, mirror symmetry, and localization tasks). Overall, the evidence reviewed indicates that spatial processes are supported by a right hemispheric network in the blind, hence, analogously to the sighted. Such a right-hemisphere dominance, however, seems more accentuated in the blind as compared to the sighted as indexed by the greater leftward bias shown in different spatial tasks. This is possibly the result of the more pronounced involvement of the right parietal cortex during spatial tasks in blind individuals compared to the sighted, as well as of the additional recruitment of the right occipital cortex, which would reflect the cross-modal plastic phenomena that largely characterize the blind brain.

Social cognition skills are typically acquired on the basis of visual information (e.g., the observation of gaze, facial expressions, gestures). In light of this, a critical issue is whether and how the lack of visual experience affects neurocognitive mechanisms underlying social skills. This issue has been largely neglected in the literature on blindness, despite difficulties in social interactions may be particular salient in the life of blind individuals (especially children). Here we provide a meta‐analysis of neuroimaging studies reporting brain activations associated to the representation of self and others' in early blind individuals and in sighted controls. Our results indicate that early blindness does not critically impact on the development of the “social brain,” with social tasks performed on the basis of auditory or tactile information driving consistent activations in nodes of the action observation network, typically active during actual observation of others in sighted individuals. Interestingly though, activations along this network appeared more left‐lateralized in the blind than in sighted participants. These results may have important implications for the development of specific training programs to improve social skills in blind children and young adults., Social cognition skills are typically acquired on the basis of visual information. Here we provide a meta‐analysis of neuroimaging studies reporting brain activations associated to the representation of self and others' in early blind individuals and in sighted controls. Our results indicate that early blindness does not critically impact on the development of the “social brain,” with social tasks performed on the basis of auditory or tactile information driving consistent activations in nodes of the action observation network, typically active during actual observation of others in sighted individuals.

Although converging evidence suggests that the posterior cerebellum is involved in visuospatial functions and in the orienting of attention, a clear topography of cerebellar regions causally involved in the control of spatial attention is still missing. In this study, we aimed to shed light on this issue by using online neuronavigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to temporarily interfere with posterior medial (Vermis lobule VII) and left lateral (Crus I/II) cerebellar activity during a task measuring visuospatial (landmark task, Experiment 1 and 2) and representational (number bisection task, Experiment 2) asymmetries in the orienting of attention. At baseline, participants showed attentional biases consistent with the literature, that is a leftward and upward bias with horizontal and vertical lines, respectively, and a leftward bias in number bisection. Critically, TMS over the left cerebellar hemisphere significantly counteracted pseudoneglect in the number bisection task, whilst not affecting attentional biases in the landmark task. In turn, TMS over the posterior vermis did not affect performance in either task. Taken together, our findings suggest that the left posterior cerebellar hemisphere (but not the posterior vermis) is a critical node of an extended brain network subtending the control of spatial attention, at least when attention needs to be allocated to an internal representational space and a certain degree of mental manipulation is required (as in the number bisection task).

Humans show a tendency to represent pitch in a spatial format. A classical finding supporting this spatial representation is the Spatial–Musical Association of Response Codes (SMARC) effect, reflecting faster responses to low tones when pressing a left/bottom-side key and to high tones when pressing a right/top-side key. Despite available evidence suggesting that the horizontal and vertical SMARC effect may be differently modulated by instrumental expertise and musical timbre, no study has so far directly explored this hypothesis in a unified framework. Here, we investigated this possibility by comparing the performance of professional pianists, professional clarinettists and non-musicians in an implicit timbre judgement task, in both horizontal and vertical response settings. Results showed that instrumental expertise significantly modulates the SMARC effect: whereas in the vertical plane a comparable SMARC effect was observed in all groups, in the horizontal plane the SMARC effect was significantly modulated by the specific instrumental expertise, with pianists showing a stronger pitch–space association compared to clarinettists and non-musicians. Moreover, the influence of pitch along the horizontal dimension was stronger in those pianists who started the instrumental training at a younger age. Results also showed an influence of musical timbre in driving the horizontal, but not the vertical, SMARC effect, with only piano notes inducing a pitch–space association. Taken together, these findings suggest that sensorimotor experience due to instrumental training and musical timbre affect the mental representation of pitch on the horizontal space, whereas the one on the vertical space would be mainly independent from musical practice.

Prior studies have shown that strabismic amblyopes do not exhibit pseudoneglect in visual line bisection, suggesting that the right-hemisphere dominance in the control of spatial attention may depend on a normally developing binocular vision. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether an abnormal binocular childhood experience also affects spatial attention in the haptic modality, thus reflecting a supramodal effect. To this aim, we compared the performance of normally sighted, strabismic and early monocular blind participants in a visual and a haptic line bisection task. In visual line bisection, strabismic individuals tended to err to the right of the veridical midpoint, in contrast with normally sighted participants who showed pseudoneglect. Monocular blind participants exhibited high variability in their visual performance, with a tendency to bisect toward the direction of the functioning eye. In turn, in haptic bisection, all participants consistently erred towards the left of the veridical midpoint. Taken together, our findings support the view that pseudoneglect in the visual and haptic modality relies on different functional and neural mechanisms.

The traditional view on the cerebellum is that it controls motor behavior. Although recent work has revealed that the cerebellum supports also nonmotor functions such as cognition and affect, only during the last 5 years it has become evident that the cerebellum also plays an important social role. This role is evident in social cognition based on interpreting goal-directed actions through the movements of individuals (social "mirroring") which is very close to its original role in motor learning, as well as in social understanding of other individuals' mental state, such as their intentions, beliefs, past behaviors, future aspirations, and personality traits (social "mentalizing"). Most of this mentalizing role is supported by the posterior cerebellum (e.g., Crus I and II). The most dominant hypothesis is that the cerebellum assists in learning and understanding social action sequences, and so facilitates social cognition by supporting optimal predictions about imminent or future social interaction and cooperation. This consensus paper brings together experts from different fields to discuss recent efforts in understanding the role of the cerebellum in social cognition, and the understanding of social behaviors and mental states by others, its effect on clinical impairments such as cerebellar ataxia and autism spectrum disorder, and how the cerebellum can become a potential target for noninvasive brain stimulation as a therapeutic intervention. We report on the most recent empirical findings and techniques for understanding and manipulating cerebellar circuits in humans. Cerebellar circuitry appears now as a key structure to elucidate social interactions. Frank Van Overwalle, Elien Heleven, Qianying Ma, and Min Pu were supported by an SRP57 grant from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and Elien Heleven was additionally supported by an FWO G002319N/AL907 grant from the Flemish government. Zaira Cattaneo was supported by a Bando Ricerca Finalizzata (GR2016-02363640) by the Italian Ministry of Health. Marco Michelutti and Arseny A. Sokolov were supported by aMille E Una Lode fellowship from the University of Padua to MM, and fellowships from the Leenaards Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation, and a grant from the Helmut Horten Foundation to AAS. Catherine Stoodley and Laura C. Rice were supported by an NIH R15MH106957 grant. Van Overwalle, F (corresponding author), Vrije Univ Brussel, Dept Psychol, Pl Laan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium; Vrije Univ Brussel, Ctr Neurosci, Pl Laan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium. Frank.VanOverwalle@vub.ac.be; mmanto@ulb.ac.be; zaira.cattaneo@unimib.it; silvia.clausi@uniroma1.it; chiara.ferrari@unipv.it; gabrieli@mit.edu; xguellparadis@mgh.harvard.edu; Elien.Heleven@vub.be; m.lupo@hsantalucia.it; Qianying.Ma@vub.be; michelutti.marco.m@gmail.com; g.olivito@hsantalucia.it; Min.Pu@vub.be; laura.blevins@student.american.edu; jschmahmann@mgh.harvard.edu; libera.siciliano@uniroma1.it; Arseny.Sokolov@chuv.ch; stoodley@american.edu; kim.vandun@uhasselt.be; LVandervert@aol.com; maria.leggio@uniroma1.it

Visual attentive tracking requires a balance of excitation and inhibition across large-scale frontoparietal cortical networks. Using methods borrowed from network science, we characterize the induced changes in network dynamics following low frequency (1 Hz) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) as an inhibitory noninvasive brain stimulation protocol delivered over the intraparietal sulcus. When participants engaged in visual tracking, we observed a highly stable network configuration of six distinct communities, each with characteristic properties in node dynamics. Stimulation to parietal cortex had no significant impact on the dynamics of the parietal community, which already exhibited increased flexibility and promiscuity relative to the other communities. The impact of rTMS, however, was apparent distal from the stimulation site in lateral prefrontal cortex. rTMS temporarily induced stronger allegiance within and between nodal motifs (increased recruitment and integration) in dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which returned to baseline levels within 15 min. These findings illustrate the distributed nature by which inhibitory rTMS perturbs network communities and is preliminary evidence for downstream cortical interactions when using noninvasive brain stimulation for behavioral augmentations.

Neurologically intact individuals usually show a leftward bias in spatial attention, known as pseudoneglect, likely reflecting a right-hemisphere dominance in the control of spatial attention. A leftward bias also seems to manifest when individuals are asked to provide aesthetic judgments about visual stimuli, like artworks. However, whether artwork perception affects the allocation of spatial attention has never been directly investigated. Here, we assessed whether viewing figurative paintings affects hemispheric imbalance in the control of spatial attention by asking participants to bisect a series of lines presented on a grey background, on figurative paintings or on non-artistic photographs of real-world scenes, while either simply observing or explicitly evaluating each image. In line with previous evidence, participants showed a leftward bisection bias in the baseline condition, reflecting pseudoneglect. Critically, the presence of a painting in the background (irrespective of whether an aesthetic evaluation was required or not) significantly shifted the bias further to the left compared to when lines were bisected over a grey background (baseline) or a photographed scene. This finding suggests that perception of visual art may affect the control of spatial attention, possibly tapping on right-hemisphere resources related to visuospatial exploration, regardless of reward apprehension mechanisms (at least when images do not evoke strong emotional reactions leading to polarized like/dislike judgements).

The occipital face area (OFA) has been shown to code the presence of symmetry in faces and in vertically symmetric dot patterns. However, it is not clear whether symmetry processing of face and non-face stimuli involve overlapping neural mechanisms in OFA. This was assessed using state-dependent TMS by employing a priming paradigm. Specifically, we examined whether prior presentation of low-level symmetry affects the impact of TMS on discrimination of symmetry in subsequently presented faces - indicating that the same neural mechanisms encode symmetry in both face and non-face stimuli. Participants performed a symmetry discrimination task on a series of faces, each of which was preceded by either a vertically symmetric, a horizontally symmetric or a non-symmetric dot configuration (prime) while receiving stimulation over either the right OFA, the right Lateral Occipital Cortex (rLO) or over a control site (Vertex). Vertically symmetric dot patterns primed symmetry discrimination in faces. The key finding was that the priming effect was not affected by TMS applied over OFA; stimulation of this site (but not of rLO) impaired the discrimination of facial symmetry regardless of prime type. Overall, these results suggest that distinct neural representations in OFA are involved in symmetry detection in face and non-face stimuli.

It has been hypothesized that embodied mechanisms encompassing the simulation of actions, emotions and corporeal sensations contribute to aesthetic appreciation of art. In line with this, in this study we assessed whether there is a relationship between the extent to which an artwork triggers motor resonance mechanisms and liking for the artwork. To this aim, we measured motor evoked potentials (MEPs) induced by TMS over M1 whilst participants viewed a series of paintings depicting either humans in static postures or performing dynamic actions, and paintings depicting static or dynamic non-human scenes. Following recording of MEPs, participants indicated how much they liked each painting and found the painting to be dynamic. Viewing of paintings depicting dynamic human actions was associated with a significant increase in MEPs size compared to baseline and to viewing of the other paintings. The more the painting conveyed the impression of a dynamic human action, the higher the MEPs amplitude and the more the artwork was liked. However, liking per se was not related to MEPs size. In fact, the positive relationship between MEPs size and preference for paintings depicting humans was entirely mediated by the perceived dynamism of the portrayed actions, and no positive relationship was observed between subjective preference for paintings depicting landscapes/objects and MEPs size. Overall, our data contribute to shed light on the possible role of embodied resonance mechanisms in aesthetic appreciation of visual art, and show that characterization of motor cortical excitability may serve as a promising approach in neuroaesthetics.

Prolonged periods of restrictions on people's freedom of movement during the first massive wave of the COVID-19 pandemic meant that most people engaged in all their daily activities at home. This suggested the need for the spatial features of the home and its occupants' perception of them to be investigated in terms of people's wellbeing. The present study was conducted on a large sample (N = 1354) drawn from different Italian regions. It examined the relationship between the “objective” and “subjective” dimensions of the home, measured in terms of objective home crowding and satisfaction with the space at home, in relation to perceived stress and the perceived risk of COVID-19 infection during the lockdown. The results showed that perceived stress is influenced by objective home crowding through the mediation of satisfaction with the space at home. These associations were more pronounced in younger generations. The negative association between satisfaction with the space at home and perceived stress was higher, the lower the perceived COVID-19 risk.

Converging evidence suggests that the perception of auditory pitch exhibits a characteristic spatial organization. This pitch-space association can be demonstrated experimentally by the Spatial Musical Association of Response Codes (SMARC) effect. This is characterized by faster response times when a low-positioned key is pressed in response to a low-pitched tone, and a high-positioned key is pressed in response to a high-pitched tone. To investigate whether the development of this pitch-space association is mediated by normal visual experience, we tested a group of early blind individuals on a task that required them to discriminate the timbre of different instrument sounds with varying pitch. Results revealed a comparable pattern in the SMARC effect in both blind participants and sighted controls, suggesting that the lack of prior visual experience does not prevent the development of an association between pitch height and vertical space.