The effect of chronic low back pain on tactile suppression during back movements

The aim of the present study was to examine whether tactile suppression, the phenomenon whereby tactile perception is suppressed during movement, would occur in the context of back movements. Of particular interest, it was investigated if tactile suppression in the back would be attenuated in those suffering from chronic low back pain. Individuals with chronic low back pain (N = 30) and a matched control group (N = 24) detected tactile stimuli on three possible locations (back, arm, chest) while performing a back or arm movement, or no movement. We hypothesized that the movements would induce tactile suppression, and that this effect would be largest for low-intense stimuli on the moving body part. We further hypothesized that, during back movements, tactile suppression on the back would be less pronounced in the chronic low back pain group than in the control group. The results showed the expected general tactile suppression effects. The hypothesis of back-specific attenuation of tactile suppression in the chronic low back pain group was not supported. However, back-specific tactile suppression in the chronic low back pain group was less pronounced in those who performed the back movements more slowly.     

Dynamic touch is affected in children with cerebral palsy

Children with developmental disorders such as cerebral palsy have limited opportunities for effortful interactions with objects and tools. The goal of the study was to investigate whether children with cerebral palsy have deficits in their ability to perceive object length by dynamic touch when compared to typically developing children. Fourteen children with typical development and 12 children with cerebral palsy were asked to report the length of hand-held rods after wielding them out of sight. Multilevel regression models indicated that I₁ (maximum principal moment of inertia) was a significant predictor of perceived length – L_P (p < .0001). The effect of I₁ on L_P was significantly different among children (p = .001) and the presence of cerebral palsy (group factor) partially explained such variance (p = .002). In addition, accuracy and reliability of the length judgments made by children with cerebral palsy were significantly lower than the typically developing children (p < .05). Theoretical and clinical implications of these results were identified and discussed.     

Low temporal precision for high impulsive individuals

Previous studies have shown that impulsive people perceive time differently from non-impulsive people. However, these studies either recruited participants from the clinical population or used impulsive behavior (rather than impulsivity trait itself) as the index of impulsivity. We investigated the relationship between time perception and self-report impulsivity trait (measured by the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale; BIS-11) in non-patient participants. We used the oddball paradigm to measure subjective duration and discrimination precision in high- and low-impulsive groups. Results show that high impulsive participants’ discrimination precision was lower than low impulsive participants (Experiment 1). The possibility that this is due to high impulsive participants having weaker attentional maintenance of the task was excluded (Experiment 2). By removing potentially confounding factors that existed in previous studies, our results demonstrate a more convincing relationship between temporal precision and the impulsivity trait in healthy participants.     

Neural correlates of viewing paintings: Evidence from a quantitative meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data

Many studies involving functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have exposed participants to paintings under varying task demands. To isolate neural systems that are activated reliably across fMRI studies in response to viewing paintings regardless of variation in task demands, a quantitative meta-analysis of fifteen experiments using the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) method was conducted. As predicted, viewing paintings was correlated with activation in a distributed system including the occipital lobes, temporal lobe structures in the ventral stream involved in object (fusiform gyrus) and scene (parahippocampal gyrus) perception, and the anterior insula—a key structure in experience of emotion. In addition, we also observed activation in the posterior cingulate cortex bilaterally—part of the brain’s default network. These results suggest that viewing paintings engages not only systems involved in visual representation and object recognition, but also structures underlying emotions and internalized cognitions.     

Learning Visual Units After Brief Experience in 10‐Month‐Old Infants

How does perceptual learning take place early in life? Traditionally, researchers have focused on how infants make use of information within displays to organize it, but recently, increasing attention has been paid to the question of how infants perceive objects differently depending upon their recent interactions with the objects. This experiment investigates 10‐month‐old infants' use of brief prior experiences with objects to visually organize a display consisting of multiple geometrically shaped three‐dimensional blocks created for this study. After a brief exposure to a multipart portion of the display, each infant was shown two test events, one of which preserved the unit the infant had seen and the other of which broke that unit. Overall, infants looked longer at the event that broke the unit they had seen prior to testing than the event that preserved that unit, suggesting that infants made use of the brief prior experience to (a) form a cohesive unit of the multipart portion of the display they saw prior to test and (b) segregate this unit from the rest of the test display. This suggests that infants made inferences about novel parts of the test display based on limited exposure to a subset of the test display. Like adults, infants learn features of the three‐dimensional world through their experiences in it.     

慢性疼痛与心理障碍

疼痛是一种复杂的心理生物学过程。疼痛的感知和情绪活动密不可分,疼痛是一种包括感觉、情绪和认知的多维性体验,人与人之间差异很大,甚至同一个体也随疼痛的背景、意义以及心理状态而异。认知因素和情感因素对疼痛感知具有非常重要的影响。本文回顾疼痛认知和情感状态调节（身心治疗的重要组成部分）潜在的神经学机制。回顾慢性疼痛本身会改变大脑环路、包括参与内源性疼痛调节的循证证据,这些证据表明随着疼痛转为慢性,控制疼痛越来越困难。     

Does driving experience in video games count? Hazard anticipation and visual exploration of male gamers as function of driving experience

Risk perception and distribution of visual attention while driving are crucial elements for accident prevention and new-driver improvement. This study investigates how racing videogames could shape the visual exploration of virtual and real road in male pre-drivers. The visual performance of players of racing video games with and without driver’s license was tested in virtual vs. real scenarios. Attention to specific elements of different types of road interactions was monitored using an eye-tracking system. Results showed that habitual use of racing video games was not found to foster a positive effect on users’ distribution of visual attention, supporting visual patterns typical of novice drivers. Gamers without driving experience replicated the same patterns in a real road scenario, ignoring road signs and potential areas of interactions with other drivers, while experienced drivers gamers explored video games roads like real roads. The fact that the gamers’ driving performance was not comparable to drivers in the virtual scenario suggests that there are other variables in the gameplay that create a less complex traffic scene, still the visual complexity of different real road interactions is kept in video game interactions, opening new perspectives towards gamers’ visual exploration of the road.     

From Demonization to Identification: How Parents Who Lost Children in Terrorist Attacks Perceive the Attacker

The aim of this article is to examine how bereaved parents who lost children in terrorist attacks in Israel perceive the terrorist attack perpetrators. Forty bereaved parents were interviewed using a semistructured in-depth interview. The content analysis revealed a typology of reactions to the Arab attackers that included perceiving them as objects of anger, hate, and revenge; as demons; as negligible; and as people with whom they could identify. The way bereaved parents perceive the Arab attackers serves as a coping resource. Follow-up research to examine the efficacy of the different types of reactions towards attackers would contribute to gaining a deeper understanding of the coping process that bereaved parents experience.     

The moving rubber hand illusion revisited: Comparing movements and visuotactile stimulation to induce illusory ownership

The rubber hand illusion is a perceptual illusion in which a model hand is experienced as part of one’s own body. In the present study we directly compared the classical illusion, based on visuotactile stimulation, with a rubber hand illusion based on active and passive movements. We examined the question of which combinations of sensory and motor cues are the most potent in inducing the illusion by subjective ratings and an objective measure (proprioceptive drift). In particular, we were interested in whether the combination of afferent and efferent signals in active movements results in the same illusion as in the purely passive modes. Our results show that the illusion is equally strong in all three cases. This demonstrates that different combinations of sensory input can lead to a very similar phenomenological experience and indicates that the illusion can be induced by any combination of multisensory information.