- Originally trained as an elementary school teacher I studied biology and psychology in Zurich with a diploma in zoolo... moreOriginally trained as an elementary school teacher I studied biology and psychology in Zurich with a diploma in zoology on functional hemispheric specialization in the human brain. Promotion on the implications of subjective randomness for neuropsychology and parapsychology. Foundation of a family with Susan as a personal highlight. Postdoctoral research training in San Diego and Victoria (Canada) and work in clinical and experimental neuropsychology after the return to Switzerland. Head of Neuropsychology Unit of University Hospital Zurich 2003 to 2019 and of Rehabilitation Center Valens from 2019 to present.edit
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The Felt Presence (FP) experience is the basic feeling that someone else is present in the immediate environment, without any other clear sensory evidence. Ranging from benevolent to distressing, personified to ambiguous, FP has been... more
The Felt Presence (FP) experience is the basic feeling that someone else is present in the immediate environment, without any other clear sensory evidence. Ranging from benevolent to distressing, personified to ambiguous, FP has been observed in neuropsychological case studies, within psychosis and paranoia, associated with sleep paralysis, anxiety, and recorded within endurance sports and spiritualist communities. In this review we summarise the philosophical and phenomenological, clinical and non-clinical correlates of FP, as well current measurement using psychometric, cognitive, and neurophysiological methods. We present current mechanistic explanations for FP, suggest a unifying cognitive framework for the phenomenon, and discuss outstanding questions for the field. FP offers a sublime window of opportunity to understand the cognitive neuroscience of own-body awareness and social agency detection; an intuitive, but poorly understood experience in health and disorder.
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OBJECTIVE Acute hydrocephalus is a frequent complication after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). Among patients needing CSF diversion, some cannot be weaned. Little is known about the comparative neurological, neuropsychological,... more
OBJECTIVE Acute hydrocephalus is a frequent complication after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). Among patients needing CSF diversion, some cannot be weaned. Little is known about the comparative neurological, neuropsychological, and health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL) outcomes in patients with successful and unsuccessful CSF weaning. The authors aimed to assess outcomes of patients by comparing those with successful and unsuccessful CSF weaning; the latter was defined as occurring in patients with permanent CSF diversion at 3 months post-aSAH. METHODS The authors included prospectively recruited alert (i.e., Glasgow Coma Scale score 13–15) patients with aSAH in this retrospective study from six Swiss neurovascular centers. Patients underwent serial neurological (National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale), neuropsychological (Montreal Cognitive Assessment), disability (modified Rankin Scale), and HRQOL (EuroQol-5D) examinations at < 72 hours, 14–28 days, and 3 months...
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Various factors, such as fear of falling, postural instability, and altered executive function, contribute to the high risk of falling in Parkinson's disease (PD). Dual-task training is an established method to reduce this risk.... more
Various factors, such as fear of falling, postural instability, and altered executive function, contribute to the high risk of falling in Parkinson's disease (PD). Dual-task training is an established method to reduce this risk. Motor-perceptual task combinations typically require a patient to walk while simultaneously engaging in a perceptual task. Motor-executive dual-tasking (DT) combines locomotion with executive function tasks. One augmented reality treadmill training (AR-TT) study revealed promising results of a perceptual dual-task training with a markedly reduced frequency of falls especially in patients with PD. We here propose to compare the effects of two types of concurrent tasks, perceptual and executive, on high-intensity TT). Patients will be trained with TT alone, in combination with an augmented reality perceptual DT (AR-TT) or with an executive DT (Random Number Generation; RNG-TT). The results are expected to inform research on therapeutic strategies for the t...
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BackgroundHazardous alcohol consumption and HIV infection increase the risk of neurocognitive impairment (NCI). We examined the association between alcohol consumption and specific neurocognitive domain function in people with HIV (PWH)... more
BackgroundHazardous alcohol consumption and HIV infection increase the risk of neurocognitive impairment (NCI). We examined the association between alcohol consumption and specific neurocognitive domain function in people with HIV (PWH) taking modern antiretroviral therapy.MethodsThe Neurocognitive Assessment in the Metabolic and Aging Cohort (NAMACO) study is a prospective, longitudinal, multicentre and multilingual (French, German and Italian) study of patients aged ≥45 years old enrolled in the Swiss HIV Cohort Study (SHCS). Baseline data from 981 study participants were examined. Five neurocognitive domains were evaluated: motor skills, speed of information processing, attention/working memory, executive function and verbal episodic memory. NCI was examined as binary (presence/absence) and continuous (mean z-score) outcomes against Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test for Consumption (AUDIT-C) scores using logistic and linear regression models, respectively.ResultsMost part...
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Increased efforts in neuroscience try to understand mental disorders as brain disorders. In the present study we investigate how common a neuroreductionist inclination is in the popular mind. Identically graphed, simulated data of... more
Increased efforts in neuroscience try to understand mental disorders as brain disorders. In the present study we investigate how common a neuroreductionist inclination is in the popular mind. Identically graphed, simulated data of mind-brain correlations were shown in three contexts with presumably different presumptions about causality. 738 highly-educated laymen rated plausibility of causality attribution from brain to mind and from mind to brain for correlations between brain structural properties and mental phenomena in the context of commonly perceived brain-lesion induced behavior (aphasia), behavior-induced training effects (piano playing), and a newly described mental disorder (Body Integrity Dysphoria). The findings reveal the expected context-dependent modulation, but also a general tendency to more readily attribute causal inference from brain to mind than vice versa. We argue that this tendency has important consequences, especially in the context of Body Integrity Dysph...
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Introduction: Increased efforts in neuroscience try to understand mental disorders as brain disorders. In the present study, we investigate how common a neuroreductionist inclination is among highly educated people. In particular, we shed... more
Introduction: Increased efforts in neuroscience try to understand mental disorders as brain disorders. In the present study, we investigate how common a neuroreductionist inclination is among highly educated people. In particular, we shed light on implicit presuppositions of mental disorders little is known about in the public, exemplified here by the case of body integrity dysphoria (BID) that is considered a mental disorder for the first time in ICD-11. Methods: Identically graphed, simulated data of mind-brain correlations were shown in 3 contexts with presumably different presumptions about causality. 738 highly educated lay people rated plausibility of causality attribution from the brain to mind and from mind to the brain for correlations between brain structural properties and mental phenomena. We contrasted participants’ plausibility ratings of causality in the contexts of commonly perceived brain lesion-induced behavior (aphasia), behavior-induced training effects (piano pl...
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Body integrity dysphoria (BID), a long-lasting desire for the amputation of physically healthy limbs, is associated with reduced fMRI resting-state functional connectivity of somatosensory cortices. Here, we used fMRI to evaluate whether... more
Body integrity dysphoria (BID), a long-lasting desire for the amputation of physically healthy limbs, is associated with reduced fMRI resting-state functional connectivity of somatosensory cortices. Here, we used fMRI to evaluate whether these findings could be replicated and expanded using a task-based paradigm. We measured brain activations during somatosensory stimulation and motor tasks for each of the four limbs in ten individuals with a life-long desire for the amputation of the left leg and fourteen controls. For the left leg, BID individuals had reduced brain activation in the right superior parietal lobule for somatosensory stimulation and in the right paracentral lobule for the motor task, areas where we previously found reduced resting-state functional connectivity. In addition, for somatosensory stimulation only, we found a robust reduction in activation of somatosensory areas SII bilaterally, mostly regardless of the stimulated body part. Areas SII were regions of conve...
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Adults with congenital heart disease are at risk for persisting executive function deficits, which are known to affect academic achievement and quality of life. Alterations in white -matter microstructure are associated with cognitive... more
Adults with congenital heart disease are at risk for persisting executive function deficits, which are known to affect academic achievement and quality of life. Alterations in white -matter microstructure are associated with cognitive impairments in adolescents with congenital heart disease. This study aimed to identify microstructural alterations potentially associated with executive function deficits in adults with congenital heart disease. Diffusion tensor imaging and tract-based spatial statistics were conducted in 45 patients (18 females) and 54 healthy controls (26 females) aged 18–32 years. Fractional anisotropy of white matter diffusion was compared between groups and correlated with an executive function score, derived from an extensive neuropsychological test battery. Patients showed widespread bilateral reduction in fractional anisotropy (P < 0.05, multiple comparison corrected) compared to controls. Lower fractional anisotropy was driven by patients with moderate and ...
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Recent behavioral evidence indicates that awake sleepwalkers show dissociation of motor control and motor awareness in a virtual reality (VR) paradigm. Intriguingly, this dissociation resembles the nocturnal disintegration of motor... more
Recent behavioral evidence indicates that awake sleepwalkers show dissociation of motor control and motor awareness in a virtual reality (VR) paradigm. Intriguingly, this dissociation resembles the nocturnal disintegration of motor awareness and movement during episodes of sleepwalking. Here, we set out to examine the neural underpinnings of altered motor agency in sleepwalkers by measuring EEG modulation during redirected walking in VR. Using this approach, we discovered distinct EEG patterns in awake sleepwalkers indicating facilitated dual tasking and salient habitual motor control as compared to healthy subjects. These observations provide electrophysiological evidence for the proposed brain-body dissociation in awake sleepwalkers. In conclusion, this study shows proof-of-principle that EEG biomarkers of movement in a VR setting might add to the diagnostic work-up of awake sleepwalkers.
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Clinical observations suggest dynamic alterations in behavior after brain surgery. While some alterations reportedly occur within days others gradually develop over several months. These alterations can be attributed to the pre-surgical... more
Clinical observations suggest dynamic alterations in behavior after brain surgery. While some alterations reportedly occur within days others gradually develop over several months. These alterations can be attributed to the pre-surgical impact of the diseased tissue, neuronal damage caused by the surgery, and subsequent plasticity. A key step towards a systems-level understanding of the brain-behavior relationships is to capture the dynamics of the cognitive alterations. Here, we first established in 38 healthy individuals that the day-to-day smartphone interactions can be used to inform on cognitive processing speed. Next, we analyzed the smartphone interactions in 12 patients undergoing intracranial tumor surgery, with postsurgical follow-up of up to a year. In healthy individuals, the speed of the touchscreen interactions was highly correlated to choice reaction times (R2 = 0.71) but less so to simple reaction times (R2 = 0.15) on Deary-Liewald tests. Touchscreen interactions slo...
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ObjectivesDiagnosing neurocognitive impairment (NCI) in HIV infection requires time‐consuming neuropsychological assessment. Screening tools are needed to identify when neuropsychological referral is indicated. We examined the positive... more
ObjectivesDiagnosing neurocognitive impairment (NCI) in HIV infection requires time‐consuming neuropsychological assessment. Screening tools are needed to identify when neuropsychological referral is indicated. We examined the positive and negative predictive values (PPVs and NPVs, respectively) of the three European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS) screening questions in identifying NCI.MethodsThe Neurocognitive Assessment in the Metabolic and Aging Cohort (NAMACO) study recruited patients aged ≥45 years enrolled in the Swiss HIV Cohort Study between 1 May 2013 and 30 November 2016. NAMACO participants (1) answered EACS screening questions, (2) underwent standardized neuropsychological assessment and (3) completed self‐report forms [Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES‐D)] rating mood. NCI categories were defined using Frascati criteria. PPVs and NPVs of the EACS screening questions in identifying NCI categories were calculated.ResultsOf 974 NAMACO participants with c...
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Hand amputation is a highly disabling event, having severe physical and psychological repercussions on a person’s life. Despite extensive efforts devoted to restoring the missing functionality via dexterous myoelectric hand prostheses,... more
Hand amputation is a highly disabling event, having severe physical and psychological repercussions on a person’s life. Despite extensive efforts devoted to restoring the missing functionality via dexterous myoelectric hand prostheses, natural and robust control usable in everyday life is still challenging. Novel techniques have been proposed to overcome the current limitations, among which the fusion of surface electromyography with other sources of contextual information. We present a dataset to investigate the inclusion of eye tracking and first person video to provide more stable intent recognition for prosthetic control. This multimodal dataset contains surface electromyography and accelerometry of the forearm, and gaze, first person video, and inertial measurements of the head recorded from 15 transradial amputees and 30 able-bodied subjects performing grasping tasks. Besides the intended application for upper-limb prosthetics, we also foresee uses for this dataset to study ey...
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ObjectivesThe aim of the study was to examine baseline neurocognitive impairment (NCI) prevalence and factors associated with NCI among patients enrolled in the Neurocognitive Assessment in the Metabolic and Aging Cohort (NAMACO)... more
ObjectivesThe aim of the study was to examine baseline neurocognitive impairment (NCI) prevalence and factors associated with NCI among patients enrolled in the Neurocognitive Assessment in the Metabolic and Aging Cohort (NAMACO) study.MethodsThe NAMACO study is an ongoing, prospective, longitudinal, multicentre and multilingual (German, French and Italian) study within the Swiss HIV Cohort Study. Between 1 May 2013 and 30 November 2016, 981 patients ≥ 45 years old were enrolled in the study. All underwent standardized neuropsychological (NP) assessment by neuropsychologists. NCI was diagnosed using Frascati criteria and classified as HIV‐associated or as related to other factors. Dichotomized analysis (NCI versus no NCI) and continuous analyses (based on NP test z‐score means) were performed.ResultsMost patients (942; 96.2%) had viral loads < 50 HIV‐1 RNA copies/mL. NCI was identified in 390 patients (39.8%): 263 patients (26.8%) had HIV‐associated NCI [249 patients (25.4%) had ...
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Introduction Virtual reality (VR) applications using head mounted displays (HMDs) allow users to deeply immerse in a virtual world. There is, however, one obstacle to a full-blown immersion, dubbed the “locomotion problem”. It concerns... more
Introduction Virtual reality (VR) applications using head mounted displays (HMDs) allow users to deeply immerse in a virtual world. There is, however, one obstacle to a full-blown immersion, dubbed the “locomotion problem”. It concerns the user’s navigation through large virtual environments. While virtual worlds can easily be expanded infinitely, physical locomotion remains constrained by the size of the available room. Redirected walking is a technique that allows users of virtual reality applications to explore virtual environments larger than the available physical space [1]. This is made possible by manipulating the walking trajectory of users through visual rotation of the virtual surroundings, without the user noticing the interference. This causes the user to correct for the rotation by walking on a curved pathway (see Figure 1). At the extreme, a user could proceed infinitely far straight forward in the virtual environment while walking in full circle in reality. Apart from...
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This study aimed to examine whether the cortical processing of emotional faces is modulated by the computerization of face stimuli (”avatars”) in a group of 25 healthy participants. Subjects were passively viewing 128 static and dynamic... more
This study aimed to examine whether the cortical processing of emotional faces is modulated by the computerization of face stimuli (”avatars”) in a group of 25 healthy participants. Subjects were passively viewing 128 static and dynamic facial expressions of female and male actors and their respective avatars in neutral or fearful conditions. Event-related potentials (ERPs), as well as alpha and theta event-related synchronization and desynchronization (ERD/ERS), were derived from the EEG that was recorded during the task. All ERP features, except for the very early N100, differed in their response to avatar and actor faces. Whereas the N170 showed differences only for the neutral avatar condition, later potentials (N300 and LPP) differed in both emotional conditions (neutral and fear) and the presented agents (actor and avatar). In addition, we found that the avatar faces elicited significantly stronger reactions than the actor face for theta and alpha oscillations. Especially thet...
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Color is key for the visual encoding of data, yet its use reportedly affects decision making in important ways. We examined the impact of various popular color schemes on experts’ and lay peoples’ map-based decisions in two, geography and... more
Color is key for the visual encoding of data, yet its use reportedly affects decision making in important ways. We examined the impact of various popular color schemes on experts’ and lay peoples’ map-based decisions in two, geography and neuroscience, scenarios, in an online visualization experiment. We found that changes in color mappings influence domain experts, especially neuroimaging experts, more in their decision-making than novices. Geographic visualization experts exhibited more trust in the unfavorable rainbow color scale than would have been predicted by their suitability ratings and their training, which renders them sensitive to scale appropriateness. Our empirical results make a strong call for increasing scientists’ awareness for and training in perceptually salient and cognitively informed design principles in data visualization.
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Computer-generated characters, so-called avatars, are widely used in advertising, entertainment, human–computer interaction or as research tools to investigate human emotion perception. However, brain responses to avatar and human faces... more
Computer-generated characters, so-called avatars, are widely used in advertising, entertainment, human–computer interaction or as research tools to investigate human emotion perception. However, brain responses to avatar and human faces have scarcely been studied to date. As such, it remains unclear whether dynamic facial expressions of avatars evoke different brain responses than dynamic facial expressions of humans. In this study, we designed anthropomorphic avatars animated with motion tracking and tested whether the human brain processes fearful and neutral expressions in human and avatar faces differently. Our fMRI results showed that fearful human expressions evoked stronger responses than fearful avatar expressions in the ventral anterior and posterior cingulate gyrus, the anterior insula, the anterior and posterior superior temporal sulcus, and the inferior frontal gyrus. Fearful expressions in human and avatar faces evoked similar responses in the amygdala. We did not find ...
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ABSTRACTBackgroundFindings on the effects of vitamin D on cognitive performance have been inconsistent and no clinical trials with detailed cognitive testing in healthy older adults have been reported.ObjectivesWe tested whether 2000 IU... more
ABSTRACTBackgroundFindings on the effects of vitamin D on cognitive performance have been inconsistent and no clinical trials with detailed cognitive testing in healthy older adults have been reported.ObjectivesWe tested whether 2000 IU is superior to 800 IU vitamin D3/d for cognitive performance among relatively healthy older adults.DesignWe analyzed data on cognitive performance as the secondary outcome of a 2-y double-blind randomized controlled trial that originally investigated the effect of vitamin D3 on knee function and pain in seniors with osteoarthritis. Participants were randomly assigned to either 2000 or 800 IU vitamin D3/d. Capsules had identical appearances and taste. A total of 273 community-dwelling older adults aged ≥60 y were enrolled 6–8 wk after unilateral joint replacement. Inclusion required a baseline Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) score of 24. We implemented a detailed 2-h cognitive test battery. The primary cognitive endpoint was the score achieved in...
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Human subjects typically deviate systematically from randomness when attempting to produce a sequence of random numbers. Despite an increasing number of behavioral and functional neuroimaging studies on random number generation (RNG), its... more
Human subjects typically deviate systematically from randomness when attempting to produce a sequence of random numbers. Despite an increasing number of behavioral and functional neuroimaging studies on random number generation (RNG), its structural correlates have never been investigated. We set out to fill this gap in 44 patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease whose impact on RNG has never been studied. The RNG task required the paced (1 Hz) generation of the numbers from 1 to 6 in a sequence as random as possible. The same task was administered in 39 matched healthy controls. To assess neuroanatomical correlates such as cortical thickness, lesion load and third ventricle width, all subjects underwent high-resolution structural MRI. Compared to controls, MS patients exhibited an enhanced tendency to arrange consecutive numbers in an ascending order ("forward counting"). Furthermore, patients showed a higher susceptibility to rule breaks (producing out-of-categor...
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Limb apparent motion perception (LAMP) refers to the illusory visual perception of a moving limb upon observing two rapidly alternating photographs depicting the same limb in two different postures. Fast stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs)... more
Limb apparent motion perception (LAMP) refers to the illusory visual perception of a moving limb upon observing two rapidly alternating photographs depicting the same limb in two different postures. Fast stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) induce the more visually guided perception of physically impossible movements. Slow SOAs induce the perception of physically possible movements. According to the motor theory of LAMP, the latter perception depends upon the observers’ sensorimotor representations. Here, we tested this theory in two independent studies by performing a central (study 1) and peripheral (study 2) manipulation of the body’s sensorimotor states during two LAMP tasks. In the first sham-controlled transcranial direct current stimulation between-subject designed study, we observed that the dampening of left sensorimotor cortex activity through cathodal stimulation biased LAMP towards the more visually guided perception of physically impossible movements for stimulus pairs at...
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Aim/objectiveThere is ongoing controversy about persistent neurological deficits in active and former football (soccer) players. We reviewed the literature for associations between football activities (including heading/head injuries) and... more
Aim/objectiveThere is ongoing controversy about persistent neurological deficits in active and former football (soccer) players. We reviewed the literature for associations between football activities (including heading/head injuries) and decline in brain structure/function.DesignSystematic literature review.Data sourcesMEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Cochrane-CRCT, SportDiscus, Cochrane-DSR=4 (accessed 2 August 2016).Eligibility criteria for selecting studiesOriginal studies reporting on football-related persistent effects on brain structure/function. Results from neurocognitive testing, neuroimaging and EEG were compared with controls and/or correlated with heading frequency and/or head injuries. Methodological quality was rated for risk-of-bias, including appropriateness of controls, correction for multiple statistical testing and assessment of heading frequency and head injuries.Results30 studies with 1691 players were included. Those 57% (8/14) of case–control studies report...
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Visuospatial processing is a complex process that is vulnerable to bias. Line bisection paradigms are used to help detect the factors that balance left and right hemispatial attention that go beyond the domains of perception and action.... more
Visuospatial processing is a complex process that is vulnerable to bias. Line bisection paradigms are used to help detect the factors that balance left and right hemispatial attention that go beyond the domains of perception and action. For example, studies have indicated the “pseudoneglect” phenomenon in the bisection of horizontally presented lines in healthy subjects. Among the modified versions of the traditional line bisection task is the “Baldwin illusion”. In the Baldwin illusion, the subjective midpoint of a line flanked by squares of different sizes is displaced towards the small square. The goal of the study was two-fold. First, we wanted to investigate whether there is an asymmetry in the Baldwin effect depending on leftward or rightward arrangement of the small square and second whether obesity (as measured by body mass index—BMI) would affect bisection of Baldwin-like flanked lines. Thirty-one healthy, right-handed female subjects (20 normal-weight and 11 overweight) ha...
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Traditional astrological wisdom has it that those born under Pisces (February/March) are statistically more attracted to mysticism and superstition that average people born under other zodiac signs. The author, considering the influence... more
Traditional astrological wisdom has it that those born under Pisces (February/March) are statistically more attracted to mysticism and superstition that average people born under other zodiac signs. The author, considering the influence of the star conctellations at birth on an individual's personality a mere superstition, proposes that birth month reportedly does have an influence on health and personality. For instance, there is a February/March peak in the births of patients with schizophrenia as well as in healthy persons scoring high on schizotypy and belief in paranormal forces, including celestial influences on personality that lack scientific substantiation. The future field of "neurastrology" should systematically investigate season-of-birth-effects on development and psychological traits.
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Despite recent advances in prosthetics, many upper limb amputees still use prostheses with some reluctance. They often do not feel able to incorporate the artificial hand into their bodily self. Furthermore, prosthesis fitting is not... more
Despite recent advances in prosthetics, many upper limb amputees still use prostheses with some reluctance. They often do not feel able to incorporate the artificial hand into their bodily self. Furthermore, prosthesis fitting is not usually tailored to accommodate the characteristics of an individual’s phantom limb sensations. These are experienced by almost all persons with an acquired amputation and comprise the motor and postural properties of the lost limb. This article presents and validates a multimodal dataset including an extensive qualitative and quantitative assessment of phantom limb sensations in 15 transradial amputees, surface electromyography and accelerometry data of the forearm, and measurements of gaze behavior during exercises requiring pointing or repositioning of the forearm and the phantom hand. The data also include acquisitions from 29 able-bodied participants, matched for gender and age. Special emphasis was given to tracking the visuo-motor coupling betwee...
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To examine discriminant validity and test-retest reliability of the Zürich maxi mental status inventory (ZüMAX) in patients with stroke. The ZüMAX is a novel domain-specific cognitive assessment tool to screen for disturbances in... more
To examine discriminant validity and test-retest reliability of the Zürich maxi mental status inventory (ZüMAX) in patients with stroke. The ZüMAX is a novel domain-specific cognitive assessment tool to screen for disturbances in neuropsychological function. The test can be used in stroke rehabilitation to estimate severity of cognitive impairment. Because evidence for validity and reliability is lacking, the tool's clinical use is limited. We administered the ZüMAX in a test-retest design to 33 community-dwelling stroke survivors, and once to 35 healthy controls matched for age and sex. We found significant group differences in subscores for the cognitive domains of executive functions and language as well as total score (P=0.001 to 0.004); we did not find group differences for the domains of praxia (defined as the ability to perform purposeful actions), visual perception and construction, or learning and memory. Test-retest reliability of the total score was good (intraclass c...
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To determine whether people with high scores for schizotypal thinking generate more uncommon words in a letter fluency task than people with low scores. Prospective study. University psychology department. Forty healthy, right-handed... more
To determine whether people with high scores for schizotypal thinking generate more uncommon words in a letter fluency task than people with low scores. Prospective study. University psychology department. Forty healthy, right-handed students. Students were administered the Magical Ideation (MI) Scale and a 2-minute letter fluency task in which they named as many nouns as possible beginning with "A" or "F," in any order. Total number of words produced and percentage of unique, rare and common words (as determined by the responses of the whole group); scores on MI scale. Participants with high scores (above the median) on the MI scale generated as many words as those who had low scores. People in both groups also generated a comparable number of unique words (named by only 1 person) and common words (named by 6 or more people). As hypothesized, people with high scores on the MI scale generated more rare words (named by fewer than 6 people) than those with low scor...
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Research Interests: Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, Medicine, Brain, Humans, Female, and 15 morePedigree, Phenotype, Primary Progressive Aphasia, Clinical Sciences, European, Middle Aged, Genetically Modified, Phenotypic variation, Indexation, Clinical Presentation, Neurosciences, Neurologic Examination, Neuropsychological Tests, Autosomal Dominant, and Nerve degeneration
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Congressi Stefano Franscini conference series! The tight functional coupling between hand and brain has greatly shaped the evolution of language, culture and technology. Any reduction or loss of hand function, whether of central or... more
Congressi Stefano Franscini conference series! The tight functional coupling between hand and brain has greatly shaped the evolution of language, culture and technology. Any reduction or loss of hand function, whether of central or peripheral origin, has devastating effects on the independence and social integration of the affected person. And any treatment, be it through human or technological intervention, must account for this unique coupling. As a result, hand and brain have drawn strong interest from the social, medical and engineering sciences alike. This conference brings together leading researchers from the multiple disciplines studying the unique dexterity and sensory abilities of the hand, its neuromechanical and physiological control, as well as its functional recovery and neuroprosthetic restoration following injury. This is the third CSF conference on these topics, following two successful events organized by Mario Wiesendanger in 1994 (Sensorimotor Function of the Han...
Mulder and colleagues [Mulder, T., Hochstenbach, J., Dijkstra, P. U., Geertzen, J. H. B. (in press). Born to adapt, but not in your dreams. Consciousness and Cognition.] report that a majority of amputees continue to experience a... more
Mulder and colleagues [Mulder, T., Hochstenbach, J., Dijkstra, P. U., Geertzen, J. H. B. (in press). Born to adapt, but not in your dreams. Consciousness and Cognition.] report that a majority of amputees continue to experience a normallylimbed body during their night dreams. They interprete this observation as a failure of the body schema to adapt to the new body shape. The present note does not question this interpretation, but points to the already existing literature on the phenomenology of the phantom limb in dreams. A summary of published investigations is complemented by a note on phantom phenomena in the dreams of paraplegic patients and persons born without a limb. Integration of the available data allows the recommendation for prospective studies to consider dream content in more detail. For instance, ‘‘adaptation” to the loss of a limb can also manifest itself by seeing oneself surrounded by amputees. Such projective types of anosognosia (‘‘transitivism”) in nocturnal dre...
SUMMARY Background. Magical thinking, a sign of schizotypy, is accompanied by a decrease in the strength of left hemisphere language dominance and by an inattention towards the right side of space ("pseudoneglect"). We set out... more
SUMMARY Background. Magical thinking, a sign of schizotypy, is accompanied by a decrease in the strength of left hemisphere language dominance and by an inattention towards the right side of space ("pseudoneglect"). We set out to explore whether it is also associated with a pseudoneglect in imagined space. Material and methods. Forty healthy right-handed adults were asked to imagine the contours of the European continent, viewed from a point in outer space directly over Switzerland. After having contemplated this mental map for one minute, they were asked to name as many European countries as they could. All subjects filled in the Magical Ideation (MI) scale, and we split the population at the median scale score into low and high MI groups. Results. The twenty subjects of the high MI group named less countries than those of the low MI group overall, but the difference was only significant for eastern ("right-sided") countries. Conclusions. This study presents pre...
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IntroductionAccording to the dopamine hypothesis functional brain abnormalities and neurochemical alterations may converge to cause psychosis through aberrant salience attribution. Indeed, resting-state functional magnetic resonance... more
IntroductionAccording to the dopamine hypothesis functional brain abnormalities and neurochemical alterations may converge to cause psychosis through aberrant salience attribution. Indeed, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) has revealed widespread brain disconnectivity across the psychotic spectrum.ObjectivesTo advance the understanding of the dopaminergic involvement in intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) and its putative relationship to the development of psychotic disorders we aimed to investigate the link between L-Dopa, a dopamine precursor, and its modulation of striatal iFC in subthreshold psychosis, i.e. non-clinical psychosis.MethodsWe used a randomized, double-blind placebo controlled study design including in our sample 56 healthy, male, right-handed, subjects with no familiar risk factors for psychosis who were assessed with the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ) and underwent 10 minutes of rs-fMRI scanning. All subjects received e...