Dream and daydream: differences and similarities

Did you know that daydreams reflect events from the previous two days and “night” dreams resemble a fictional plot?

Does your dog have social skills?

A study suggests that viewing the owner’s face works as a positive social reinforcement for dogs. Learn more about this and other surprising results about “man’s best friend”.

Can meditation influence the way we perceive time and space?

Marc Wittman, supported by the BIAL Foundation in the scope of project 50/16 – Changes in the temporal width of the present moment after meditation demonstrated that experienced meditators perceived their body boundaries as less salient during meditation than while reading the story. Morever, they also felt time passed more quickly and they paid less attention to time during meditation. The paper “Changes in subjective time and self during meditation” featuring these results was published in the journal Biology.

Can decision making during recognition modulate alpha rhythm?

Carlo Sestieri, supported by the BIAL Foundation in the scope of project 159/16 – Unraveling the neural mechanisms of human memory decisions with magnetoencephalography, demonstrated, through MEG, the parietal lobe involvement in episodic memory, more specifically, event-related desynchornization (ERD) of alpha band could represent the neuronal signature of the accumulation process during a simple memor-based decision task. The paper “Alpha rhythm modulations in the intraparietal sulcus reflect decision signals during item recognition” featuring these results was published in the journal NeuroImage.

Does transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation modulate behavior?

Ruben Azevedo, supported by the BIAL Foundation in the scope of project 88/16 – The interoceptive self: Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation as a new tool to investigate heart-brain interactions demonstrated that the transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve could be an effective neuromodulatory technique to modulate cognitive processes and pupil size. The paper “Event-related transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation modulates behaviour” featuring these results was published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology