Abstract
The complexity of human sociocognitive architecture makes the distinction between what is the appropriate action and what is not a rather subtle task of its own. Emotions contribute significantly to this fuzziness and often play a causal role in undermining our best judgement. Yet, the neurobehavioral mechanisms that interface action control and emotional processing are largely unknown and represent a modern scientific challenge. This project will attack this problem from a series of complementary but highly interconnected perspectives. Tight integration is fostered via the sharing of a new version of a widely-used task (with preliminary data here) and of the same overarching research question: How does emotion stimuli affect action inhibition processes? Complementarity derives from the specific expertise each of the Research Unit has developed on non-invasive brain stimulation, clinical and forensic psychology. A mixture of expertise that will converge towards one integrated goal: Characterizing the functional brain pathways allowing the effective integration of motor- and emotion-related processing. To this aim, the Stop Signal Task (SST) [1] employed here introduces emotional stimuli (facial expressions) as a stop signal. Preliminary data show that emotional negative stimuli facilitates action control performance. The project is organized around 4 work packages (WPs). WP1 will explain the role of unconscious visual processing and will map behavioral performance to individual measures of cortical excitation/inhibition balance. Preliminary data show that the observation of unconscious negative stimuli impact the corticospinal excitability. WP2 will describe the impact of emotional stimuli on action inhibition in atypical development. WP3 will disclose the neural bases of the interface between action control and emotion and will empower the connectivity between crucial nodes. WP4 will explore the potential translational applications in the psychiatric domain. Disentangling how action control interfaces with emotion processing would open a whole new window upon the pathophysiology of a series of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders as well as socially inadequate behaviors (i.e., criminals). Importantly, the project is aimed at identifying objective biomarkers of maladaptive action-emotion integration and at devising novel rehabilitation programs, based on non-invasive brain stimulation, to induce short-term plastic changes of the key neural pathways. This project, by providing a proof of concept that inhibitory action control can be enhanced, would have important translational implications for the promotion of innovative, targeted and non- pharmacological therapeutic interventions in the psychiatric domain.
Project details
Unibo Team Leader: Danilo Carrozzino
Unibo involved Department/s:
Dipartimento di Psicologia "Renzo Canestrari"
Coordinator:
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna(Italy)
Total Eu Contribution: Euro (EUR) 212.500,00
Total Unibo Contribution: Euro (EUR) 112.500,00
Project Duration in months: 24
Start Date:
05/10/2023
End Date:
05/10/2025
