Sensory

Facilitation of Action Planning in Children with Autism The Contribution of the Maternal Body Odor

Imitation is a key socio-cognitive skill impaired in individuals with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). It is known that the familiarity with an actor facilitates the appearance of imitative abilities. Here, we explore whether a highly familiar and …

Kinematics of the Reach-to-Grasp Movement in Vascular Parkinsonism a Comparison with Idiopathic Parkinson’s Disease Patients

The performance of patients with vascular parkinsonism (VPD) on a reach-to-grasp task was compared with that of patients affected by idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (IPD) and age-matched control subjects. The aim of the study was to determine how …

Selecting Food. The Contribution of Memory, Liking, and Action

The goal of the present experiment was twofold identifying similarities and differences between flavour memory and visual memory mechanisms and investigating whether kinematics could serve as an implicit measure for food selection. To test flavour …

Body Odors Promote Automatic Imitation in Autism

_Background_ Autism spectrum disorders comprise a range of neurodevelopmental pathologies characterized, among other symptoms, by impaired social interactions. Individuals with this diagnosis are reported to often identify people by repetitively …

Implicit Olfactory Processing Attenuates Motor Disturbances in Idiopathic Parkinson's Disease

Many reports in the literature indicate that idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD) patients have substantial olfactory dysfunctions even before motor symptoms become evident. It has not yet been clarified, however, if some form of implicit olfactory …

Visuo-Olfactory Integration during Action Observation and Execution of Reach-to-Grasp Movements

Observing the actions of others prompts the motor system to perform a similar action. However, visual cues are not the only source of sensory information for the motor system, which is affected by stimuli presented in all modalities even when they …

Implicit Olfactory Abilities in Traumatic Brain Injured Patients

To investigate implicit olfactory abilities in a group of anosmic traumatic brain injured (TBI) patients, an olfactomotor priming paradigm was administered. A group of matched normosmic/mildly microsmic TBI patients and a group of neurologically …