Circadian rhythms, sleep homeostasis, and chronotype interact to modulate cognitive processes such as attention and executive functions, leading to fluctuations in performance throughout the day and significant impairments under conditions of misalignment or sleep deprivation. The study was conducted in two phases and included the assessment of subjective measures of sleepiness, vigor, affect, sleep quality, and individual chronotype. In the first phase, 32 healthy participants (19 females; mean age = 24.9 ± 3.14) were tested at four different times of the day to examine diurnal variations in attentional performance. In the second phase, a subsample of 8 participants (4 females; mean age = 24.4 ± 2.20) underwent a total sleep-deprivation protocol and completed the AD-Task over two consecutive days to evaluate the impact of prolonged wakefulness on attentional and executive functioning. In the first phase, results revealed a progressive decline in selective attention across the day (F(3.93) = 3.188; p = 0.027; η2p = 0.093) and significantly slower reaction times in divided attention during the morning (F(3.93) = 7.3134; p < 0.001; η2p = 0.191), indicating a time-of-day modulation of attentional resources. In the second phase, total sleep deprivation led to a marked impairment in performance, reflected by slower reaction times (F(11.77) = 1.948; p = 0.046; η2p = 0.218) and reduced discriminative ability (d'; F(11.77) = 13.438; p < 0.001; η2p = 0.657), particularly in task-switching conditions. These findings suggest increased vulnerability of executive functions under sleep deprivation, likely associated with reduced efficiency of prefrontal cortical processes. The results confirm that time of the day and pressure of sleep significantly affect attention and cognitive flexibility and further affirm the validity of the AD-Task as a reliable instrument for detecting these variations under ecologically relevant conditions.

PURPOSE:This systematic review examines executive dysfunction in Huntington's disease (HD), an inherited neurodegenerative disorder characterized by cognitive alterations that may emerge years before the onset of motor symptoms. The objective of this review is to provide an updated and comprehensive synthesis of executive function deficits observed across the clinical spectrum of HD-from presymptomatic to the more advanced symptomatic phases-and to examine how these deficits relate to underlying neurobiological changes identified through neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies. METHOD:A systematic review was conducted encompassing studies published up to November 2024 and listed on PubMed database. Inclusion criteria focused on clinical and experimental studies involving executive functions in HD at different stages. A total of 3487 articles were screened, of which 115 met the eligibility criteria. The present review synthesizes recent longitudinal and multimodal findings, with a specific focus on the presymptomatic and prodromal phases, offering an integrative perspective that links cognitive, structural, and functional markers of executive dysfunction. FINDING:The findings reveal a selective, stage-dependent pattern of executive dysfunction. Early alterations are most consistently observed in psychomotor speed, cognitive flexibility, response inhibition, and working memory updating, whereas later stages exhibit broader impairments in planning and attention, accompanied by overall functional decline. Among neuroimaging markers, striatal atrophy, frontostriatal disconnection, and reduced prefrontal activation during executive tasks emerge as the most robust correlates of executive dysfunction. CONCLUSION:These results underscore the relevance of early cognitive assessment for detecting subtle executive changes prior to overt motor symptoms, and the need for longitudinal, multimodal and computational approaches integrating behavioral, neuroimaging, and electrophysiological data. Future research should prioritize prospective tracking of presymptomatic individuals, the standardization of executive function measures, and the identification of biologically markers to inform early interventions and monitor treatment efficacy.

BackgroundCognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has emerged as a promising intervention in Parkinson's disease (PD), although the available evidence remains heterogeneous in design and quality.ObjectiveThe present mixed method systematic review aims to synthesize the evidence on CBT in people with PD (PwPD) and caregivers, focusing on clinical applications and therapeutic outcomes across symptom domains.MethodsA systematic search of PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus and Cochrane databases was conducted for studies published between 1980 and 2025, following PRISMA guidelines. Eligible studies evaluated clinical applications and therapeutic outcomes of CBT-based interventions in PwPD and/or caregivers and included randomized controlled trials, observational studies, case series and single-case reports. Findings were synthesized narratively, and certainty of evidence was assessed using a simplified GRADE approach.ResultsFifty-four studies met inclusion criteria. The most robust evidence was observed for depression, with several RCTs supporting the efficacy of CBT, resulting in moderate certainty of evidence. Evidence for anxiety and sleep disorders suggests potential benefit; however, certainty was low due to heterogeneity and small sample sizes. Evidence for impulse control disorders, cognitive outcomes, motor symptoms, and caregiver -related outcomes remain limited, with low to very low certainty, Effects on motor symptoms were inconsistent and likely indirect.ConclusionsCBT represents a flexible and transdiagnostic intervention for treating non-motor symptoms in PwPD and for caregivers. While moderate-certainty evidence supports CBT use for depression, evidence for other domains remains limited. These findings should be interpreted with caution, and further large-scale, well designed RCTs are needed to strengthen the evidence base and clarify optimal therapeutic targets and delivery format.

This review synthesizes research on how olfactory stimuli influence social cognition, emotions, and prejudice, an area that remains understudied despite the olfactory system's direct neural connections to limbic regions like the amygdala and hippocampus. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, the authors systematically searched PubMed and Web of Science (2000-2025), identifying 21 eligible studies from 569 records. The literature reveals three core mechanisms through which odors exert their effects: (1) early perceptual modulation of social stimuli, (2) affective priming via disgust and valence systems, and (3) higher-order modulation of social judgments and moral evaluation. Unpleasant odors (e.g., sweat, rotten smells) increase vigilance, bias emotion perception, and amplify both implicit and explicit prejudices against marginalized groups such as gay men or immigrants. Putative human chemosignals like androstadienone and hedione subtly modulate mood, attention, and social judgments in context-dependent ways. Individual differences-including disgust sensitivity, neuroticism, and religiosity-systematically moderate these effects. Neuroimaging (EEG/fMRI) shows that odors engage distributed networks involving the amygdala, insula, and frontal regions, affecting early and late-stage emotional processing. The authors conclude that olfactory stimuli act as powerful, often subconscious modulators of social cognition. They propose that odors function as contextual priors that bias social inference, especially under conditions of ambiguity or uncertainty. These findings highlight the need to integrate olfactory dimensions into models of social behavior and bias formation. Future research should employ ecologically valid paradigms such as virtual reality to better understand how smells shape real-world interpersonal and intergroup dynamics.

Introduction:Moral decision-making, a core component of social cognition, relies on integrating affective and cognitive processes supported by distributed neural networks. Neurodegenerative diseases disrupt these systems to varying degrees, offering unique models to investigate the neural bases of moral cognition. This review aimed to systematically examine moral decision-making deficits across neurodegenerative diseases, delineate disease-specific patterns of moral cognition impairment, and highlight conceptual and methodological gaps to inform future research and clinical assessment. Methods:A systematic search of PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus was conducted for studies published up to January 2025, following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses 2020 guidelines. Results:Seventeen studies met inclusion criteria. Convergent evidence indicates that behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) produces a distinctive utilitarian bias characterized by diminished empathy, emotional blunting, and impaired integration of intention and outcome, reflecting degeneration of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, anterior insula, and amygdala within the salience and default mode networks. In contrast, Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients typically preserve affective aversion to harm, suggesting relative sparing of limbic-ventromedial circuits despite conceptual and executive decline. Moral reasoning in Parkinson's disease (PD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) remains largely intact unless frontotemporal involvement occurs, while dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) manifests intermediate profiles marked by reduced cognitive theory of mind and aberrant moral affect. Discussion:These findings delineate disease-specific patterns of moral dysfunction linked to network-level degeneration rather than global cognitive decline. Understanding these mechanisms holds translational relevance for early diagnosis, ethical capacity assessment, and the development of ecologically valid tools to monitor socio-emotional deterioration in neurodegenerative disorders.

Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance has emerged as a compelling mechanism by which early-life stress can shape behavior in descendants with no direct exposure to trauma. However, whether such heritable modifications affect subtle behavioral phenotypes, like processing of social and emotional stimuli, remains poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the behavioral profile of fourth-generation heterozygous dopamine-transporter (DAT-HET) rats. Compared to control (SX) rats, our experimental group (labelled SIKK) consisted of animals (at G4, F3) born from MIK sires (at G3, F2), who descended from grand-dams (at G2, F1) who were in turn exposed to early-life maltreatment by their own DAT-KO mothers (the great-grand-dams, at G1, F0). To probe inhibitory control and social cognition, we employed the signaled licking / avoidance of punishment (SLAP) task, the elicited preference test (EPT), and the social recognition test (SRT). In the SLAP task, SIKK rats exhibited slower acquisition of passive avoidance, suggesting dampened sensitivity to predictive aversive cues. In the EPT, wild-type focal rats displayed a clear preference for SX over SIKK conspecifics, indicating reduced social appeal of epigenetically altered animals. In the SRT, SX rats successfully discriminated between a novel and a familiar DAT-KO conspecific, while SIKK rats failed to do so, revealing impaired social cognition. Together, these findings indicate that, despite the absence of direct trauma in their infancy, SIKK rats exhibit a distinct behavioral phenotype characterized by increased reactivity to threat and deficits in social preferences and cognition. These alterations reflect inherited dysfunctions in limbic dopaminergic circuits, particularly within PFC. Our study highlights how an ancestor’s adversity can shape adaptive behavior in future generations, providing a powerful model for understanding the biological basis of vulnerability to psychiatric disorders.

Eye tracking is a tool that is widely used in scientific research, enabling the acquisition of precise and detailed data on an individual’s eye movements during interaction with visual stimuli, thus offering a rich source of information on visual perception and associated cognitive processes. In this work, a new software called SPEED (labScoc Processing and Extraction of Eye tracking Data) is presented to process data acquired by Pupil Lab Neon (Pupil Labs, Berlin, Germany). The software is written in Python which helps researchers with the feature extraction step without any coding skills. This work also presents a pilot study in which five healthy subjects were included in research investigating oculomotor correlates during MDMT (Moral Decision-Making Task) and testing possible autonomic predictors of participants’ performance. A statistically significant difference was observed in reaction times and in the number of blinks made during the choice between the conditions of the personal and impersonal dilemma.

Background/Objectives: Eye-tracking technology has gained increasing attention in sports science, as it provides valuable insights into visual attention, decision-making, and motor planning. This systematic review examines the application of eye-tracking technology in basketball, highlighting its role in analyzing cognitive and perceptual strategies in players, referees, and coaches. Methods: A systematic search was conducted following PRISMA guidelines. Studies published up until December 2024 were retrieved from PubMed and Web of Science using keywords related to basketball, eye tracking, and visual search. The inclusion criteria focused on studies using eye-tracking technology to assess athletes, referees, and coaches. A total of 1706 articles were screened, of which 19 met the eligibility criteria. Results: Eye-tracking studies have shown that expert basketball players exhibit longer quiet eye (QE) durations and more efficient gaze behaviors compared to novices. In high-pressure situations, skilled players maintain more stable QE characteristics, leading to better shot accuracy. Referees rely on efficient gaze strategies to make split-second decisions, although less experienced referees tend to neglect key visual cues. In coaching, eye-tracking studies suggest that guided gaze techniques improve tactical understanding in novice players but have limited effects on experienced athletes. Conclusions: Eye tracking is a powerful tool for studying cognitive and behavioral functioning in basketball, offering valuable insights for performance enhancement and training strategies. Future research should explore real-game settings using mobile eye trackers and integrate artificial intelligence to further refine gaze-based training methods.

OBJECTIVES:This study investigated the impact of active music therapy on mood, sleep, and daily functioning in institutionalized older adults without dementia. METHODS:Eighty-five participants aged 65 and older were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 39; mean age = 73.5 ± 5.1) receiving active music therapy involving singing, rhythmic instruments, and movement, or a control group (n = 46; mean age = 72.8 ± 5.7) engaged in passive music listening. Sessions lasted one hour, three times weekly for ten weeks. Assessments before and after the intervention included the Mini-Mental State Examination, Geriatric Depression Scale, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and Everyday Competence Questionnaire. RESULTS:Compared to controls, participants in the active therapy group showed significant reductions in depressive symptoms and sleep disturbances, alongside improved everyday competence, with medium-to-large effect sizes. Cognitive performance remained stable in both groups. CONCLUSIONS:Active music therapy thus emerges as a safe, low-cost, and non-pharmacological intervention that enhances emotional well-being, sleep quality, and autonomy among cognitively preserved institutionalized older adults. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS:These findings highlight music therapy as an engaging and effective strategy to reduce depressive symptoms, improve subjective sleep perception and daytime functioning, and promote independence and resilience in aging populations.

Introduction:Attention control is a fundamental component of cognitive functioning and involves the ability to selectively process relevant stimuli, divide attention across tasks, and flexibly switch between attention demands. The present study describes the development and validation of the Attentional Demands Task (AD-Task), a new paradigm designed to measure selective attention, divided attention, and the cognitive costs associated with switching between these attentional processes. Based on and expanded upon the Switching Attentional Demands Task (SwAD-Task), the AD-Task introduces increased stimulus complexity, optimized temporal dynamics, and enhanced ecological validity. Methods:Forty-one healthy young adults (age: 21.0 ± 2.25; 33 F) completed the AD-Task along with established attentional paradigms (Oddball Task for selective attention, Dual-Task for divided attention). In a second experimental phase, the potential effects of practice were evaluated through an intensive training protocol involving 22 participants (age: 22.5 ± 2.89; 16 F). Results:Performance indices demonstrated strong convergent validity, with significant correlations in reaction times and accuracy measures across tasks. As expected, divided attention was associated with slower response times and reduced accuracy compared to selective attention, reflecting the increased cognitive load of processing multiple stimuli within a single modality. Analysis of switching costs revealed asymmetries, with selective attention displaying greater vulnerability to Task switching effects. No significant differences emerged between trained and untrained groups in overall task performance, aside from a modest improvement in target discrimination accuracy under switching conditions in the trained group. Discussion:These findings support the AD-Task as a sensitive, reliable, and repeatable measure of attentional control and flexibility. The AD-Task advances current methodologies by addressing previous limitations related to sensory modality interference and limited task complexity.

In developmental-age kids with specific-learning-disabilities (SLD), functional illiteracy entails poor logical reasoning; in those with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a deficit in prospective memory results in difficulty executing previously planned actions. We model this SLD and/or ADHD construct in the rat via the signalled-licking/avoidance-of-punishment protocol (SLAP): We aim to study to assess rats' ability to merge two independently learned notions (one Pavlovian and one instrumental) and their deliberate exploitation. Rats were tested in Skinner boxes with a water-dispenser and lickometer. The 'Flash' paradigm consists of 30-min daily sessions, in which 5-min safe phases (i.e., sound and light off, signalled free-drinking) are intertwined by 1-min unsafe phases (i.e., sound and light on). If subjects drink during unsafe phases, a mild footshock is released: Rats learn to withhold drinking. The 'Allow' paradigm starts and stays in the unsafe phase. Rats can shift to a 2-min safe phase through a single nose poke in the active-hole. The possibility to exert control over the environment, via seeking dark-and-silence (the predictive contingencies) as deliberate goal, is an unexplored construct in rats. In data from the 'Flash' paradigm, a greater number of licks/h during safe phases is confirming that rats easily understand classical passive-avoidance contingencies. Findings from the 'Allow' paradigm indicate increased inefficacious nose pokes/h during safe phases, compared to unsafe ones. This is clearly suggesting that rats associate the change of phase with an outcome of their own input into the active nose-poking device. However, rats do not understand the 'potential' for instrumental exploitation of their nose pokes. As such, no significant inferences were drawn across the two independent associative notions. Neurobiology of this putative 'insight' capability may rely on limbic-striatal-cortical networks. Impairments in the latter may be involved in deficits of prospective memory (in ADHD), and/or impairments in logic skills (in SLD). The SLAP protocol may offer insights on basic neurobiology as well as modulatory effects thereon of pharmacological molecules.

This paper outlines a new system for processing of eye-tracking data in basketball live games with two pre-trained Artificial Intelligence (AI) models. blueThe system is designed to process and extract features from data of basketball coaches and referees, recorded with the Pupil Labs Neon Eye Tracker, a device that is specifically optimized for video analysis. The research aims to present a tool useful for understanding their visual attention patterns during the game, what they are attending to, for how long, and their physiological responses, blueas is evidenced through pupil size changes. AI models are used to monitor events and actions within the game and correlate these with eye-tracking data to provide understanding into referees’ and coaches’ cognitive processes and decision-making. This research contributes to the knowledge of sport psychology and performance analysis by introducing the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based eye-tracking analysis in sport with wearable technology and light neural networks that are capable of running in real time.

Background: Cognitive changes in Huntington's disease (HD) precede motor manifestations. ENROLL-HD platform includes four cognitive measures of information processing speed (IPS). Our group is eager to seek clinical markers in the life stage that is as close as possible to the age of onset (ie, the so called prodromal HD phase) because this is the best time for therapeutic interventions.Objectives: Our study aimed to test whether cognitive scores in prodromal ENROLL-HD mutation carriers show the potential to predict the severity of motor and behavioral changes once HD became fully manifested.Methods: From the global ENROLL-HD cohort of 21,343 participants, we first selected a premanifest Cohort#1 (ie, subjects with Total Motor Score (TMS) <10 and Diagnostic Confidence Level (DCL) <4, N = 1.222). From this cohort, we then focused on a prodromal Cohort#2 of subjects who were ascertained to phenoconvert into manifest HD at follow-up visits (ie, subjects from 6 <= TMS <= 9 and DCL <4 to TMS >= 10 and DCL = 4, n = 206).Results: The main results of our study showed that low IPS before phenoconversion in Cohort#2 predicted the severity of motor and behavioral manifestations. By combining the four IPS cognitive measures (eg, the Categorical Verbal Fluency Test; Stroop Color Naming Test; Stroop Word Reading; Symbol Digit Modalities Test), we generated a Composite Cognition Score (CCS). The lower the CCS score the higher the TMS and the apathy scores in the same longitudinally followed-up patients after phenoconversion.Conclusions: CCS might represent a clinical instrument to predict the prognosis of mutation carriers who are close to manifesting HD.

Background/Objective: Aging is associated with both cognitive and physical decline. Some factors, such as lifestyle and environment, can significantly contribute to accelerating or slowing down the decline processes. Our study aimed to evaluate the impact of lifestyle (active vs. non-active) and environmental context (institutionalized vs. non-institutionalized) on the cognitive functioning, psychological well-being, sleep quality, and daily living skills of elderly people. Methods: Our sample consisted of 182 subjects divided into active and non-active groups (subjects who engage or not in physical and social activities, respectively; mean age in years: 67.19 vs. 68.75) and 245 subjects divided into institutionalized and non-institutionalized groups (i.e., living in a nursing home or not, respectively; mean age in years: 79.49 vs. 71.72). Participants were enrolled voluntarily and randomly in the city of L’Aquila. A battery of psychological instruments was administered to evaluate general cognitive decline, depressive symptoms, self-assessed sleep quality, and daily living skills. Results: Regarding lifestyle, the active group exhibited significantly lower levels of depression, better sleep quality, and daily living skills with respect to the non-active group. Regarding environmental context, institutionalized subjects showed higher levels of depression and reduced cognitive functioning, which were linked to reduced sleep quality and worsened daily living skills. When comparing the non-active with the institutionalized group, the latter showed higher levels of depression and reduced cognitive functioning, more sleep complaints, and reduced daily living skills. Conclusions: Our study highlights that an active lifestyle and a non-institutionalized environment, both allowing greater mobility and autonomy, are two factors that positively contribute to the mental and physical well-being of elderly individuals. Furthermore, the healthcare institution context appears to have a greater negative impact on the psycho-physical well-being of the subjects involved compared to a non-active lifestyle.

Dopamine (DA) is mainly involved in locomotor activity, reward processes and maternal behaviors. Rats with KO gene for dopamine transporter (DAT), coding for a truncated DAT protein, are in hyperdopaminergic conditions and thus develop stereotyped behaviors and hyperactivity. Our aim was to test the prior transgenerational modulation of wild and truncated alleles as expressed in heterozygous DAT rats: specifically, we addressed the possible sequelae due to genotype and gender of the ancestors, with regard to behavioral differences in F1, F2, F3 rats. We studied non-classical DAT heterozygotes (HETs) based on two specular lines, with putative grandmaternal vs. grand-paternal imprinting. MAT females (F1; offspring of KO male and WT female) mated with a KO male to generate MIX offspring (F2). Specularly, PAT females (F1; offspring of KO female and WT male) mated with a KO male to generate PIX offspring (F2). Similarly to PAT, we obtained MUX (F2; HET offspring of MAT sire and KO dam); we also observed the F3 (MYX: HET offspring of KO male and MUX female, thus with DAT-KO maternal grandmother like also for PIX). We studied their circadian cycle of locomotor activity and their behavior in the elevated-plus-maze (EPM). Locomotor hyper-activity occurs in F1, the opposite occurs in F2, with MYX rats appearing undistinguishable from WT ones. Open-arm preference emerged in PIX and MIX rats. Only MAT and MYX rats showed a significant vulnerability for ADHD-like inattentive symptoms (duration of rearing in the EPM; Viggiano et al., 2002). A risk-taking profile is evident in the F2 phenotype, while inattentiveness from F1 progeny tends to be transferred to F3. We hypothesize that DAT-related phenotypes result from effective inheritance through pedigree of imprints that are dependent on grandparents, suggesting a protective role for gestation within a hyperdopaminergic uterus. For major features, similar odd (F1, F3) generations appear opposed to even (F2) ones; for minor specific features, the phenotype transfer may affect the progenies with a male but not a female DAT-KO ancestor.

In this work a multimodal gallery was developed, from which to extract positive stimuli that reduce people stress level. Positive and negative stimuli were selected from IAPS, IADS, and E-MOVIE databases and were separately evaluated by two groups of forty-four participants using PANAS and SAM questionnaires. The effect of the stimulations on mood induction was assessed using a mixed-model analysis of variance (ANOVA) Group (positive, negative) x Time (pre, post). Experimental results indicated that images and movies were effective in managing human emotions, producing a significant difference in participants emotional state after their presentation respect to baseline; sounds did not result able to affect the emotional states of participants. Basing on the experimental results a multimodal gallery was developed: it is composed of positive images and videos; also sounds were included as neutral stimuli.

Sleep quality, chronotype, and mood may be closely interconnected processes. Typically, such constructs are measured independently, leaving out important information regarding their intrinsic relationships. The Sleep, Circadian Rhythms, and Mood (SCRAM) questionnaire is a promising tool for measuring sleep, chronotype, understood as diurnal preference, and depressive symptomatology, and the interrelationships between them. Anxiety has also been linked to sleep quality, chronotype, and depression, but there is currently no scale that measures these constructs together. This study aims to validate a revised version of the SCRAM questionnaire (rSCRAM), incorporating items to measure anxious mood. 486 Italian participants were involved in two studies. In Study 1, principal component analysis (PCA) identified representative anxiety elements from validated questionnaires. In Study 2, after adding the anxiety elements, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) established a 4-factor, 16-item model. The rSCRAM demonstrated excellent psychometric properties: high internal consistency (α = 0.72-0.90) and a strong test-retest reliability of the scales over 2 weeks (r = 0.73-0.82), a high correlation for convergent validity, and low correlations for divergent validity. The rSCRAM questionnaire measures the constructs for which it was created and revised. Including the anxiety scale enhances its utility in assessing mental health constructs within a single instrument.

IntroductionSeveral studies demonstrated the utility of immersive virtual reality (VR) as a complementary approach to conventional therapy for improving motor, psychological and cognitive impairment in some pathological conditions. Our pilot study aims to evaluate for the first time: 1) sense of presence, tolerability and usability of VR immersive experience in patients with early stages of Huntington disease (eHDp) compared to healthy controls (HC); 2) correlation between the use of technology/cybersickness and the variables of presence/usability; 3) correlation between clinical characteristics (genetic, motor, functional and cognitive) and VR's variables.MethodWe recruited 10 eHDp and 10 age, gender and education matched HC. Participants completed questionnaires about sense of presence, usability, tolerability and technology use profile. Subjects were exposed to different VR scenarios from a first-person perspective through a standalone VR headset.ResultsOur results showed no significant statistical difference between eHDp and HC for the sense of presence (p=0.910), usability (p=0.744) and tolerability (p=0.730) during the VR experience. Familiarity with the use of technology was also comparable between groups (p=0.676). Regarding correlations in eHDp group, our results showed no correlations between use of technology/tolerability and the sense of presence/usability. Moreover, clinical characteristics of eHDp (genetic, motor, functional and cognitive scores) did not influence the sense of presence, tolerability and usability.ConclusionOur research presents preliminary evidence for the applicability of VR in eHDp. These results open up the possibility to explore future applications of this methodology in rehabilitation (i.e., cognitive training, physiotherapy), diagnosis and psychological support in Huntington disease patients.

Migraine is a debilitating neurological condition linked to various psychological comorbidities. The aims of our study are: 1) to evaluate potential psychopathological differences between patients in treatment with anti-CGRP monoclonal antibodies (SPECIFIC group) and those with onabotulinumtoxin-A/oral pharmacotherapy (Group NON-SPECIFIC), 2) to compare treatment efficacy over time between groups, and examined whether psychopathological comorbidities can influence it. This is a post-hoc ambispective study: a retrospective analysis of patient-level real-life data prospectively collected for clinical evaluation. We enrolled 102 patients with chronic migraine (CM), 64 in treatment with erenumab or galcanezumab, and 38 with botulinum toxin or oral pharmacotherapies. Psychopathological variables are assessed at baseline, whereas clinical factors over time. The NON-SPECIFIC group showed more pronounced emotion regulation difficulties (DERS, p = 0.001), alexithymia (TAS-20, p = 0.012), and impulsiveness (BIS-11, p = 0.002) with respect to the SPECIFIC group. Moreover, treatment efficacy overtime was more pronounced in the group with anti-CGRP treatment with a reduction of migraine frequency overtime, pain intensity, and improved quality of life up to six months post-treatment. Psychopathological comorbidity did not influence treatment efficacy. Our study highlighted more pronounced psychopathological comorbidities in patients in treatment with NON-SPECIFIC therapies in terms of impulsivity, alexithymia, and emotion regulation. Moreover, treatment efficacy overtime was more pronounced and stable over time in the SPECIFIC group, and psychopathological comorbidity did not influence it.

This study examined the stability of the functional connectome (FC) over time using fingerprint analysis in healthy subjects. Additionally, it investigated how a specific stressor, namely sleep deprivation, affects individuals’ differentiation. To this aim, 23 healthy young adults underwent magnetoencephalography (MEG) recording at three equally spaced time points within 24 h: 9 a.m., 9 p.m., and 9 a.m. of the following day after a night of sleep deprivation. The findings indicate that the differentiation was stable from morning to evening in all frequency bands, except in the delta band. However, after a night of sleep deprivation, the stability of the FCs was reduced. Consistent with this observation, the reduced differentiation following sleep deprivation was found to be negatively correlated with the effort perceived by participants in completing the cognitive task during sleep deprivation. This correlation suggests that individuals with less stable connectomes following sleep deprivation experienced greater difficulty in performing cognitive tasks, reflecting increased effort.