Neural control of voluntary eye closure: a case study and an fMRI investigation of blinking and winking

The current paper describes a rare case of a patient who suffered from unilateral apraxia of eye closure as a result of a bilateral stroke. Interestingly, the patient's ability to voluntarily close both eyelids (i.e. blinking) was not affected, indicating that different neural mechanisms control each type of eye closure. The stroke caused damage to a large part of the right frontal cortex, including the motor cortex, pre-motor cortex and the frontal eye field (FEF). The lesion in the left hemisphere was restricted to the FEF. In order to further study the neural mechanisms of eye closure, we conducted an fMRI study in a group of neurological healthy subjects. We found that all areas of the oculomotor cortex were activated by both left and right winking, including the FEF, supplementary eye field (SEF), and posterior parietal cortex (PPC). Blinking activated FEF and SEF, but not PPC. Both FEF and PPC were significantly more active during winking than blinking. Together, these results provide evidence for a critical role of the FEF in voluntary unilateral eye closure.     

Hesitancy to Return to the Pre-pandemic Routine

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - The goal of the present study was to explore COVID-19 related hesitancy, which represents the inability of people to return to...     

Behavior analysis of cigarette smoking

Patterns of cigarette smoking, treated as series of discrete events in time, were investigated with a variety of quantitative techniques designed to characterize individual subject smoking series and to illuminate the relationship between cigarette smoking and environmental events. Data were collected from a total of 35 subjects who were either participants in residential laboratory studies or in a smoking cessation program. Cigarette smoking events were found to be fairly irregularly distributed with respect to time within individual subject series. However, strong dependencies were found between the occurrence in time of individual acts of cigarette smoking and coffee drinking. In addition, the distribution and frequency of smoking events throughout one-hour activity sequences were found to be dependent upon the nature of the activity, and the temporal scheduling of activities was found to affect several quantitative indices of smoking patterns.     

Retention of orienting reaction habituation in patients with postmeningoencephalitic epilepsy

A polygraphic study on habituation of the somatic, autonomic, and EEG components of the orienting reaction elicited by a repetitive auditory stimulus during successive (weekly) sessions was performed in 29 patients with postmeningoencephalic epilepsy (PME) and in 116 control subjects. The study evidenced significant retention disturbances of orienting reaction habituation (i.e., of learning), the “saving” of stimulation, achieved from one session to another to obtain the habituation criterion, being lesser in PME patients than in control subjects. The severity of habituation retention disturbances depended on seizure frequency, electroclinical form, and history, as well as on features of EEG tracings.     

Maternal Emotion Socialization of Adolescent Girls Engaging in Non-Suicidal Self-Injury

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Non-suicidal self injury (NSSI) is a transdiagnostic maladaptive behavior that is highly prevalent in adolescence. A greater understanding of the...     

Postphenomenological Method and Technological Things Themselves

Human Studies - We live in a world where it is impossible to exist without, and beyond, technologies. Despite this omnipresence, we tend to overlook their influence on us. The vigorously developing...