Recent research indicates that transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) of specific brain regions can successfully improve various forms of creative cognition. Although the endeavor to increase human creative capacity is intriguing from a neuroscientific perspective, and of interest to the general public, it raises numerous neuroethico-legal and…

Brain plasticity associated with anomia recovery in aphasia is poorly understood. Here, I review four recent studies from my lab that focused on brain modulation associated with long-term anomia outcome, its behavioral treatment, and the use of transcranial brain stimulation to enhance anomia treatment success in individuals with chronic aphasia…

Through protein interactions mediated by their cytoplasmic C termini the GluN2A and GluN2B subunits of NMDA receptors (NMDARs) have a key role in the formation of NMDAR signaling complexes at excitatory synapses. Although these signaling complexes are thought to have a crucial role in NMDAR-dependent forms of synaptic plasticity such as long-term…

It is generally held that noun processing is specifically sub-served by temporal areas, while the neural underpinnings of verb processing are located in the frontal lobe. However, this view is now challenged by a significant body of evidence accumulated over the years. Moreover, the results obtained so far on the neural implementation of noun and…

One of the most frequent symptoms of unilateral stroke is aphasia, the impairment or loss of language functions. Over the past few years, behavioral and neuroimaging studies have shown that rehabilitation interventions can promote neuroplastic changes in aphasic patients that may be associated with the improvement of language functions. Following…

Plasticity in two input pathways into the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA), the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the sensory thalamus, have been suggested to underlie extinction, suppression of a previously acquired conditioned response (CR) following repeated presentations of the conditioned stimulus (CS). However, little is known about…

Since about two decades neuroscientists have systematically faced the problem of consciousness: the aim is to discover the neural activity specifically related to conscious perceptions, i.e. the biological properties of what philosophers call qualia. In this view, a neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) is a precise pattern of brain activity…

Different physiological and behavioral events activate transcription of "Arc/Arg3.1" in neurons in vivo, but the signal transduction pathways that mediate induction in particular situations remain to be defined. Here, we explore the relationships between induction of "Arc/Arg3.1" transcription in dentate granule cells in vivo and activation of…

This study investigated whether rhesus monkeys show evidence of metacognition in a reduced, visual oculomotor task that is particularly suitable for use in fMRI and electrophysiology. The 2-stage task involved punctate visual stimulation and saccadic eye movement responses. In each trial, monkeys made a decision and then made a bet. To earn…

Pitch processing is lateralized to the right hemisphere; linguistic pitch is further mediated by left cortical areas. This experiment investigates whether ear asymmetries vary in brainstem representation of pitch depending on linguistic status. Brainstem frequency-following responses (FFRs) were elicited by monaural stimulation of the left and…

The key question of how the brain codes the meaning of words and pictures is the focus of vigorous debate. Is there a "semantic hub" in the temporal poles where these different inputs converge to form amodal conceptual representations? Alternatively, are there distinct neural circuits that underpin our comprehension of pictures and words?…

The conditioned stimulus (CS) pathway that is necessary for visual delay eyeblink conditioning was investigated in the current study. Rats were initially given eyeblink conditioning with stimulation of the ventral nucleus of the lateral geniculate (LGNv) as the CS followed by conditioning with light and tone CSs in separate training phases.…

Neurophysiological studies yield contrary results whether attentional problems of patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are related to early visual processing deficits or not. Evoked gamma-band responses (GBRs), being among the first cortical responses occurring as early as 90 ms after visual stimulation in human EEG, have…

Neuronal plasticity allows the central nervous system to learn skills and remember information, to reorganize neuronal networks in response to environmental stimulation, and to recover from brain and spinal cord injuries. Neuronal plasticity is enhanced in the developing brain and it is usually adaptive and beneficial but can also be maladaptive…

It has been claimed that verb processing (as opposed to noun processing) is subserved by specific neural circuits in the left prefrontal cortex. In this study, we took advantage of the unusual grammatical characteristics of clitic pronouns in Italian (e.g., "lo" and "la" in "portalo" and "portala" "bring it [masculine]/[feminine]",…