Lia Antico - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Lia Antico

European Journal of Pain, Apr 1, 2019

These results extend previous findings about common representational coding between the experienc... more These results extend previous findings about common representational coding between the experience of first-hand and others' pain. In particular, they highlight that reliable part of the information shared is supramodal in nature, and relates to a broad dimension of unpleasantness common also to painless aversive states such as disgust.

Schizophrenia Bulletin, Mar 1, 2015

Patients with schizophrenia can sometimes report strange face illusions when staring at themselve... more Patients with schizophrenia can sometimes report strange face illusions when staring at themselves in the mirror; such experiences have been conceptualized as anomalous self-experiences that can be experienced with a varying degree of depersonalization. During adolescence, anomalous self-experiences can also be indicative of increased risk to develop schizophreniaspectrum disorders. To date however, the Mirror-Gazing test (MGT), an experimentally validated experiment to evaluate the propensity of strange face illusions in nonclinical and clinical adults, has yet to be investigated in an adolescent sample. The first goal of the present study was to examine experimentally induced self-face illusions in a nonclinical sample of adolescents, using the MGT. The second goal was to investigate whether dimensions of adolescent trait schizotypy were differentially related to phenomena arising during the MGT. One hundred and ten community adolescents (59 male) aged from 12 to 19 years (mean age = 16.31, SD age = 1.77) completed the MGT and Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire. The results yielded 4 types of strange face illusions; 2 types of illusions (slight change of light/color [20%] and own face deformation [45.5%]) lacked depersonalization-like phenomena (no identity change), while 2 other types (vision of other identity [27.3%], and vision of non-human identity [7.3%]) contained clear depersonalization-like phenomena. Furthermore, the disorganization dimension of schizotypy associated negatively with time of first illusion (first press), and positively with frequency of illusions during the MGT. Statistically significant differences on positive and disorganized schizotypy were found when comparing groups on the basis of degree of depersonalization-like phenomena (from slight color changes to nonhuman visions). Similarly to experimentally induced self-face illusions in patients with schizophrenia, such illusions in a group of nonclinical adolescents present significant associations to schizotypy dimensions.

The inspiration for this dissertation comes from the desire to study social interactions, and how... more The inspiration for this dissertation comes from the desire to study social interactions, and how we understand other people's affective states. In those situations, we wanted to know what type of information is taken into account while we recognize others' emotions or we experience social misconduct, and how this information shapes our somatic and affective experience. Extended research in psychology and neuroscience supported embodied models of social cognition, arguing that several key elements of our inter-personal relationships (e.g., understanding others' affective states, reacting to a mistreatment) are grounded in representations of basal sensory-affective experiences, such as pain and disgust. However, it is still unclear whether the information accessed relates to sensory-specific representations of the first-hand state or instead to broader (supra-ordinal) dimensions that act orthogonally between different states, such as unpleasantness, arousal, or salience. For instance, it might be that when people observe pain in others, they simulate on their own body either the same detailed aching experience (sensory-specific representation), or a more general discomfort common also to disgust (supra-ordinal representation). To address this question, we tested the role played by two qualitatively different (but comparably unpleasant) first-hand experiences of pain and disgust on: emotional facial processing (Chapter 2), social exclusion (Chapters 3 & 4), and the combination of the two (Chapter 5). Across four studies, we measured behavioural, physiological, and neural activity in approximately ~ 230 neurotypical individuals, with the aim of assessing whether pain and disgust influenced (or were influenced by) social behaviour in dissociated or comparable

Cognition, Dec 1, 2018

Seminal theories posit that social and physical suffering underlie partly-common representational... more Seminal theories posit that social and physical suffering underlie partly-common representational code. It is unclear, however, if this shared information reflects a modality-specific component of pain, or alternatively a supramodal code for properties common to many aversive experiences (unpleasantness, salience, etc.). To address this issue, we engaged participants in a gaming experience in which they were excluded or included by virtual players. After each game session, participants were subjected to comparably-unpleasant painful or disgusting stimuli. Subjective reports and cardiac responses revealed a reduced sensitivity to pain following exclusion relative to inclusion, an effect which was more pronounced in those participants who declared to feel more affected by the gaming manipulation. Such modulation was not observed for disgust. These findings indicate that the relationship between social and physical suffering does not generalize to disgust, thus suggesting a shared representational code at the level of modality-specific components of pain.

<p>A) Example of a fear-happy morph continuum in facial expression, ranging from pure fear ... more <p>A) Example of a fear-happy morph continuum in facial expression, ranging from pure fear to pure happiness. B) During the task, participants watched negative, neutral or positive movie clips, and subsequently performed a decision-making task where they categorized morphed faces as fearful or happy. Note that these face images are examples similar but not identical to the faces presented in the actual tasks which used KDEF faces, and are therefore for illustrative purposes only. We have received informed consent according to Plos guidelines from the individual portrayed here.</p

<p>A) Subjects with a more negative mood showed a higher propensity to classify ambiguous f... more <p>A) Subjects with a more negative mood showed a higher propensity to classify ambiguous faces as fearful than subjects with less negative mood (1^st and 3^rd tertiles of the PANAS negative scale). B-D) Correlations showing that the more individuals’ interpretation bias (i.e. PSE) was negative, the higher the state anxiety (B), depression (C), and trait anxiety (D).</p

Embodied models argue that social cognition (e.g., understanding others' affective states, re... more Embodied models argue that social cognition (e.g., understanding others' affective states, reacting to a mistreatment) is grounded in representations of basal sensory-affective experiences, such as pain and disgust. However, it is unclear whether the information accessed relates to sensory-specific representations of the first-hand state or instead to broader (supra-ordinal) dimensions that act orthogonally between different states, such as unpleasantness, arousal, or salience. In this thesis, I examined the role played by two qualitatively different (but comparably unpleasant) first-hand experiences of pain and disgust on emotional facial processing (Study 1), social exclusion (Studies 2 & 3), and the combination of the two (Study 4). I analyzed behavioural, physiological and neural responses (using fMRI) from healthy participants, which were engaged in a new experimental set-up developed for assessing whether pain and disgust influenced (or were influenced by) social behaviour...

Seminal theories posit that social and physical suffering underlie partly-common representational... more Seminal theories posit that social and physical suffering underlie partly-common representational code. It is unclear, however, if this shared information reflects a modality-specific component of pain, or alternatively a supramodal code for properties common to many aversive experiences (unpleasantness, salience, etc.). To address this issue, we conducted experiments involving social inclusion or exclusion. Following each gaming experience, a painful or disgusting stimulation of comparable unpleasantness were delivered. This design allows to assess whether the effect of social exclusion on subjective pain (as found in the literature) does generalize to other unpleasant painless experiences. Here you can find uploaded the data from the article: Antico L., Guyon A., Mohamed ZK., Corradi-Dell'Acqua C. (2018) "Beyond Unpleasantness. Social exclusion affects the experience of pain, but not of equally-unpleasant disgust", Cognition, 181, 1-11.

In the last two years, governments of many countries imposed heavy social restrictions to contain... more In the last two years, governments of many countries imposed heavy social restrictions to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus, with consequent increase of bad mood, distress, or depression for the people involved. Few studies investigated the impact of these restrictive measures on individual social proficiency, and specifically the processing of emotional facial information, leading to mixed results. The present research aimed at investigating systematically whether, and to which extent, social isolation influences the processing of facial expressions. To this end, we manipulated the social exclusion experimentally through the well-known Cyberball game (within-subject factor), and we exploited the occurrence of the lockdown for the Swiss COVID-19 first wave by recruiting participants before and after being restricted at home (grouping factor). We then tested whether either form of social segregation influenced the processing of pain, disgust or neutral expressions, across mult...

Cognition, 2018

Seminal theories posit that social and physical suffering underlie partly-common representational... more Seminal theories posit that social and physical suffering underlie partly-common representational code. It is unclear, however, if this shared information reflects a modality-specific component of pain, or alternatively a supramodal code for properties common to many aversive experiences (unpleasantness, salience, etc.). To address this issue, we engaged participants in a gaming experience in which they were excluded or included by virtual players. After each game session, participants were subjected to comparably-unpleasant painful or disgusting stimuli. Subjective reports and cardiac responses revealed a reduced sensitivity to pain following exclusion relative to inclusion, an effect which was more pronounced in those participants who declared to feel more affected by the gaming manipulation. Such modulation was not observed for disgust. These findings indicate that the relationship between social and physical suffering does not generalize to disgust, thus suggesting a shared representational code at the level of modality-specific components of pain.

Playing action video games (AVG) has been associated with benefits in cognition. Nevertheless, AV... more Playing action video games (AVG) has been associated with benefits in cognition. Nevertheless, AVG are often violent and concerns exist regarding the affective and social profile of frequent action video game players (AVGPs). This cross-sectional study contrasted individuals who frequently or seldom play AVG on laboratory measures of aggressive and altruistically-motivated behaviors, and self-report measures of aggressive and empathic personalities. Moreover, since previous research highlighted that competitive gaming is linked to aggression, a second goal was to investigate competitive personality in AVGPs. Using multiple regressions, we estimated how competitive personality, together with other personality and mental health factors, may explain individual variance in aggressive and altruistically-motivated behaviors. AVGPs displayed higher levels of competitive personality, aggressive behavior and personality compared with non-gamers, despite no difference in empathic personality ...

European Journal of Pain, 2019

BackgroundEmbodied models of social cognition argue that others’ affective states are processed b... more BackgroundEmbodied models of social cognition argue that others’ affective states are processed by re‐enacting a sensory‐specific representation of the same state in the observer. However, neuroimaging studies suggest that a reliable part of the representation shared between self and others is supramodal and relates to dimensions such as Unpleasantness or arousal, common to qualitatively different experiences. Here we investigated whether representations of first‐hand pain and disgust influenced the subsequent evaluation of facial expressions in Modality‐specific fashion, or in terms of Unpleasantness or arousal.MethodsThirty volunteers were subjected to thermal painful and olfactory disgusting events, and subsequently were asked to classify computer‐generated faces expressing pain (characterized by high Unpleasantness and arousal), disgust (high Unpleasantness and low arousal), surprise (low Unpleasantness and high arousal) and hybrid combinations thereof.ResultsThermal and olfacto...

Action video game players (AVGPs) display enhancements in various aspects of cognition, especiall... more Action video game players (AVGPs) display enhancements in various aspects of cognition, especially in perception and top-down attention. To date, the existing literature has examined perceptual and attentional changes almost exclusively in the context of stimuli and tasks devoid of any emotional content. Thus, whether the changes documented in the cognitive domain extend to the emotional domain remains largely unknown. The present work addresses this issue by presenting two experiments contrasting AVGPs and non-video game players (NVGPs) in their ability to perceive static and dynamic facial emotions. Under an enhanced perception account, AVGPs should outperform NVGPs when processing facial emotion. Yet, under a perceptual template learning account, the use of stimuli that human participants are already experts at predicts little to no group differences. To evaluate these two hypotheses, the present work contrasts perceptual performance of AVGPs and NVGPs in the context of two facia...

Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2015

Patients with schizophrenia can sometimes report strange face illusions when staring at themselve... more Patients with schizophrenia can sometimes report strange face illusions when staring at themselves in the mirror; such experiences have been conceptualized as anomalous self-experiences that can be experienced with a varying degree of depersonalization. During adolescence, anomalous self-experiences can also be indicative of increased risk to develop schizophreniaspectrum disorders. To date however, the Mirror-Gazing test (MGT), an experimentally validated experiment to evaluate the propensity of strange face illusions in nonclinical and clinical adults, has yet to be investigated in an adolescent sample. The first goal of the present study was to examine experimentally induced self-face illusions in a nonclinical sample of adolescents, using the MGT. The second goal was to investigate whether dimensions of adolescent trait schizotypy were differentially related to phenomena arising during the MGT. One hundred and ten community adolescents (59 male) aged from 12 to 19 years (mean age = 16.31, SD age = 1.77) completed the MGT and Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire. The results yielded 4 types of strange face illusions; 2 types of illusions (slight change of light/color [20%] and own face deformation [45.5%]) lacked depersonalization-like phenomena (no identity change), while 2 other types (vision of other identity [27.3%], and vision of non-human identity [7.3%]) contained clear depersonalization-like phenomena. Furthermore, the disorganization dimension of schizotypy associated negatively with time of first illusion (first press), and positively with frequency of illusions during the MGT. Statistically significant differences on positive and disorganized schizotypy were found when comparing groups on the basis of degree of depersonalization-like phenomena (from slight color changes to nonhuman visions). Similarly to experimentally induced self-face illusions in patients with schizophrenia, such illusions in a group of nonclinical adolescents present significant associations to schizotypy dimensions.

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are widely distributed in the human brain and play an ... more Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are widely distributed in the human brain and play an important role in the neuromodulation of brain networks implicated in attentional processes. Previous work in humans showed that heteromeric α4β2 nAChRs are abundant in the cingulo-insular network underlying attentional control. It has been proposed that cholinergic neuromodulation by α4β2 nAChRs is involved in attentional control during demanding tasks, when additional resources are needed to minimize interference from task-irrelevant stimuli and focus on task-relevant stimuli. Here we investigate the link between the availability of α4β2 nAChRs in the cingulo-insular network and behavioral measures of interference control using two versions of the Stroop paradigm, a task known to recruit cingulo-insular areas. We used a previously published PET dataset acquired 24 non-smoking male subjects in the context of a larger study which investigated the brain distribution of nAChRs in two clini...

European Journal of Pain, Apr 1, 2019

These results extend previous findings about common representational coding between the experienc... more These results extend previous findings about common representational coding between the experience of first-hand and others' pain. In particular, they highlight that reliable part of the information shared is supramodal in nature, and relates to a broad dimension of unpleasantness common also to painless aversive states such as disgust.

Schizophrenia Bulletin, Mar 1, 2015

Patients with schizophrenia can sometimes report strange face illusions when staring at themselve... more Patients with schizophrenia can sometimes report strange face illusions when staring at themselves in the mirror; such experiences have been conceptualized as anomalous self-experiences that can be experienced with a varying degree of depersonalization. During adolescence, anomalous self-experiences can also be indicative of increased risk to develop schizophreniaspectrum disorders. To date however, the Mirror-Gazing test (MGT), an experimentally validated experiment to evaluate the propensity of strange face illusions in nonclinical and clinical adults, has yet to be investigated in an adolescent sample. The first goal of the present study was to examine experimentally induced self-face illusions in a nonclinical sample of adolescents, using the MGT. The second goal was to investigate whether dimensions of adolescent trait schizotypy were differentially related to phenomena arising during the MGT. One hundred and ten community adolescents (59 male) aged from 12 to 19 years (mean age = 16.31, SD age = 1.77) completed the MGT and Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire. The results yielded 4 types of strange face illusions; 2 types of illusions (slight change of light/color [20%] and own face deformation [45.5%]) lacked depersonalization-like phenomena (no identity change), while 2 other types (vision of other identity [27.3%], and vision of non-human identity [7.3%]) contained clear depersonalization-like phenomena. Furthermore, the disorganization dimension of schizotypy associated negatively with time of first illusion (first press), and positively with frequency of illusions during the MGT. Statistically significant differences on positive and disorganized schizotypy were found when comparing groups on the basis of degree of depersonalization-like phenomena (from slight color changes to nonhuman visions). Similarly to experimentally induced self-face illusions in patients with schizophrenia, such illusions in a group of nonclinical adolescents present significant associations to schizotypy dimensions.

The inspiration for this dissertation comes from the desire to study social interactions, and how... more The inspiration for this dissertation comes from the desire to study social interactions, and how we understand other people's affective states. In those situations, we wanted to know what type of information is taken into account while we recognize others' emotions or we experience social misconduct, and how this information shapes our somatic and affective experience. Extended research in psychology and neuroscience supported embodied models of social cognition, arguing that several key elements of our inter-personal relationships (e.g., understanding others' affective states, reacting to a mistreatment) are grounded in representations of basal sensory-affective experiences, such as pain and disgust. However, it is still unclear whether the information accessed relates to sensory-specific representations of the first-hand state or instead to broader (supra-ordinal) dimensions that act orthogonally between different states, such as unpleasantness, arousal, or salience. For instance, it might be that when people observe pain in others, they simulate on their own body either the same detailed aching experience (sensory-specific representation), or a more general discomfort common also to disgust (supra-ordinal representation). To address this question, we tested the role played by two qualitatively different (but comparably unpleasant) first-hand experiences of pain and disgust on: emotional facial processing (Chapter 2), social exclusion (Chapters 3 & 4), and the combination of the two (Chapter 5). Across four studies, we measured behavioural, physiological, and neural activity in approximately ~ 230 neurotypical individuals, with the aim of assessing whether pain and disgust influenced (or were influenced by) social behaviour in dissociated or comparable

Cognition, Dec 1, 2018

Seminal theories posit that social and physical suffering underlie partly-common representational... more Seminal theories posit that social and physical suffering underlie partly-common representational code. It is unclear, however, if this shared information reflects a modality-specific component of pain, or alternatively a supramodal code for properties common to many aversive experiences (unpleasantness, salience, etc.). To address this issue, we engaged participants in a gaming experience in which they were excluded or included by virtual players. After each game session, participants were subjected to comparably-unpleasant painful or disgusting stimuli. Subjective reports and cardiac responses revealed a reduced sensitivity to pain following exclusion relative to inclusion, an effect which was more pronounced in those participants who declared to feel more affected by the gaming manipulation. Such modulation was not observed for disgust. These findings indicate that the relationship between social and physical suffering does not generalize to disgust, thus suggesting a shared representational code at the level of modality-specific components of pain.

<p>A) Example of a fear-happy morph continuum in facial expression, ranging from pure fear ... more <p>A) Example of a fear-happy morph continuum in facial expression, ranging from pure fear to pure happiness. B) During the task, participants watched negative, neutral or positive movie clips, and subsequently performed a decision-making task where they categorized morphed faces as fearful or happy. Note that these face images are examples similar but not identical to the faces presented in the actual tasks which used KDEF faces, and are therefore for illustrative purposes only. We have received informed consent according to Plos guidelines from the individual portrayed here.</p

<p>A) Subjects with a more negative mood showed a higher propensity to classify ambiguous f... more <p>A) Subjects with a more negative mood showed a higher propensity to classify ambiguous faces as fearful than subjects with less negative mood (1^st and 3^rd tertiles of the PANAS negative scale). B-D) Correlations showing that the more individuals’ interpretation bias (i.e. PSE) was negative, the higher the state anxiety (B), depression (C), and trait anxiety (D).</p

Embodied models argue that social cognition (e.g., understanding others' affective states, re... more Embodied models argue that social cognition (e.g., understanding others' affective states, reacting to a mistreatment) is grounded in representations of basal sensory-affective experiences, such as pain and disgust. However, it is unclear whether the information accessed relates to sensory-specific representations of the first-hand state or instead to broader (supra-ordinal) dimensions that act orthogonally between different states, such as unpleasantness, arousal, or salience. In this thesis, I examined the role played by two qualitatively different (but comparably unpleasant) first-hand experiences of pain and disgust on emotional facial processing (Study 1), social exclusion (Studies 2 & 3), and the combination of the two (Study 4). I analyzed behavioural, physiological and neural responses (using fMRI) from healthy participants, which were engaged in a new experimental set-up developed for assessing whether pain and disgust influenced (or were influenced by) social behaviour...

Seminal theories posit that social and physical suffering underlie partly-common representational... more Seminal theories posit that social and physical suffering underlie partly-common representational code. It is unclear, however, if this shared information reflects a modality-specific component of pain, or alternatively a supramodal code for properties common to many aversive experiences (unpleasantness, salience, etc.). To address this issue, we conducted experiments involving social inclusion or exclusion. Following each gaming experience, a painful or disgusting stimulation of comparable unpleasantness were delivered. This design allows to assess whether the effect of social exclusion on subjective pain (as found in the literature) does generalize to other unpleasant painless experiences. Here you can find uploaded the data from the article: Antico L., Guyon A., Mohamed ZK., Corradi-Dell'Acqua C. (2018) "Beyond Unpleasantness. Social exclusion affects the experience of pain, but not of equally-unpleasant disgust", Cognition, 181, 1-11.

In the last two years, governments of many countries imposed heavy social restrictions to contain... more In the last two years, governments of many countries imposed heavy social restrictions to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus, with consequent increase of bad mood, distress, or depression for the people involved. Few studies investigated the impact of these restrictive measures on individual social proficiency, and specifically the processing of emotional facial information, leading to mixed results. The present research aimed at investigating systematically whether, and to which extent, social isolation influences the processing of facial expressions. To this end, we manipulated the social exclusion experimentally through the well-known Cyberball game (within-subject factor), and we exploited the occurrence of the lockdown for the Swiss COVID-19 first wave by recruiting participants before and after being restricted at home (grouping factor). We then tested whether either form of social segregation influenced the processing of pain, disgust or neutral expressions, across mult...

Cognition, 2018

Seminal theories posit that social and physical suffering underlie partly-common representational... more Seminal theories posit that social and physical suffering underlie partly-common representational code. It is unclear, however, if this shared information reflects a modality-specific component of pain, or alternatively a supramodal code for properties common to many aversive experiences (unpleasantness, salience, etc.). To address this issue, we engaged participants in a gaming experience in which they were excluded or included by virtual players. After each game session, participants were subjected to comparably-unpleasant painful or disgusting stimuli. Subjective reports and cardiac responses revealed a reduced sensitivity to pain following exclusion relative to inclusion, an effect which was more pronounced in those participants who declared to feel more affected by the gaming manipulation. Such modulation was not observed for disgust. These findings indicate that the relationship between social and physical suffering does not generalize to disgust, thus suggesting a shared representational code at the level of modality-specific components of pain.

Playing action video games (AVG) has been associated with benefits in cognition. Nevertheless, AV... more Playing action video games (AVG) has been associated with benefits in cognition. Nevertheless, AVG are often violent and concerns exist regarding the affective and social profile of frequent action video game players (AVGPs). This cross-sectional study contrasted individuals who frequently or seldom play AVG on laboratory measures of aggressive and altruistically-motivated behaviors, and self-report measures of aggressive and empathic personalities. Moreover, since previous research highlighted that competitive gaming is linked to aggression, a second goal was to investigate competitive personality in AVGPs. Using multiple regressions, we estimated how competitive personality, together with other personality and mental health factors, may explain individual variance in aggressive and altruistically-motivated behaviors. AVGPs displayed higher levels of competitive personality, aggressive behavior and personality compared with non-gamers, despite no difference in empathic personality ...

European Journal of Pain, 2019

BackgroundEmbodied models of social cognition argue that others’ affective states are processed b... more BackgroundEmbodied models of social cognition argue that others’ affective states are processed by re‐enacting a sensory‐specific representation of the same state in the observer. However, neuroimaging studies suggest that a reliable part of the representation shared between self and others is supramodal and relates to dimensions such as Unpleasantness or arousal, common to qualitatively different experiences. Here we investigated whether representations of first‐hand pain and disgust influenced the subsequent evaluation of facial expressions in Modality‐specific fashion, or in terms of Unpleasantness or arousal.MethodsThirty volunteers were subjected to thermal painful and olfactory disgusting events, and subsequently were asked to classify computer‐generated faces expressing pain (characterized by high Unpleasantness and arousal), disgust (high Unpleasantness and low arousal), surprise (low Unpleasantness and high arousal) and hybrid combinations thereof.ResultsThermal and olfacto...

Action video game players (AVGPs) display enhancements in various aspects of cognition, especiall... more Action video game players (AVGPs) display enhancements in various aspects of cognition, especially in perception and top-down attention. To date, the existing literature has examined perceptual and attentional changes almost exclusively in the context of stimuli and tasks devoid of any emotional content. Thus, whether the changes documented in the cognitive domain extend to the emotional domain remains largely unknown. The present work addresses this issue by presenting two experiments contrasting AVGPs and non-video game players (NVGPs) in their ability to perceive static and dynamic facial emotions. Under an enhanced perception account, AVGPs should outperform NVGPs when processing facial emotion. Yet, under a perceptual template learning account, the use of stimuli that human participants are already experts at predicts little to no group differences. To evaluate these two hypotheses, the present work contrasts perceptual performance of AVGPs and NVGPs in the context of two facia...

Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2015

Patients with schizophrenia can sometimes report strange face illusions when staring at themselve... more Patients with schizophrenia can sometimes report strange face illusions when staring at themselves in the mirror; such experiences have been conceptualized as anomalous self-experiences that can be experienced with a varying degree of depersonalization. During adolescence, anomalous self-experiences can also be indicative of increased risk to develop schizophreniaspectrum disorders. To date however, the Mirror-Gazing test (MGT), an experimentally validated experiment to evaluate the propensity of strange face illusions in nonclinical and clinical adults, has yet to be investigated in an adolescent sample. The first goal of the present study was to examine experimentally induced self-face illusions in a nonclinical sample of adolescents, using the MGT. The second goal was to investigate whether dimensions of adolescent trait schizotypy were differentially related to phenomena arising during the MGT. One hundred and ten community adolescents (59 male) aged from 12 to 19 years (mean age = 16.31, SD age = 1.77) completed the MGT and Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire. The results yielded 4 types of strange face illusions; 2 types of illusions (slight change of light/color [20%] and own face deformation [45.5%]) lacked depersonalization-like phenomena (no identity change), while 2 other types (vision of other identity [27.3%], and vision of non-human identity [7.3%]) contained clear depersonalization-like phenomena. Furthermore, the disorganization dimension of schizotypy associated negatively with time of first illusion (first press), and positively with frequency of illusions during the MGT. Statistically significant differences on positive and disorganized schizotypy were found when comparing groups on the basis of degree of depersonalization-like phenomena (from slight color changes to nonhuman visions). Similarly to experimentally induced self-face illusions in patients with schizophrenia, such illusions in a group of nonclinical adolescents present significant associations to schizotypy dimensions.

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are widely distributed in the human brain and play an ... more Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are widely distributed in the human brain and play an important role in the neuromodulation of brain networks implicated in attentional processes. Previous work in humans showed that heteromeric α4β2 nAChRs are abundant in the cingulo-insular network underlying attentional control. It has been proposed that cholinergic neuromodulation by α4β2 nAChRs is involved in attentional control during demanding tasks, when additional resources are needed to minimize interference from task-irrelevant stimuli and focus on task-relevant stimuli. Here we investigate the link between the availability of α4β2 nAChRs in the cingulo-insular network and behavioral measures of interference control using two versions of the Stroop paradigm, a task known to recruit cingulo-insular areas. We used a previously published PET dataset acquired 24 non-smoking male subjects in the context of a larger study which investigated the brain distribution of nAChRs in two clini...