Cognitive neuroscience has witnessed a surge of interest in investigating the neural correlates of the mind when it drifts away from an ongoing task and the external environment. To that end, functional neuroimaging research has consistently implicated the default mode network (DMN) and frontoparietal control network (FPCN) in mind-wandering. Yet, it remains unknown which subregions within these ...

Background: <br> Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a condition characterized by persistent and unexplained fatigue that may result in severe impairment of daily functioning. Currently, there is no curative treatment for CFS, and many patients experience the existing interventions as ineffective. Thus, there is a need for new approaches that target psychological maintenance factors and coping. ...

Several studies have implied gender differences in startle reaction to emotional facial expressions. However, few studies have been designed to investigate the difference between responding to emotional female vs. male faces, nor gender differences in responses. The present experiment investigated startle EMG responses to a startle probe while viewing pictures of neutral, happy, angry, fearful, and ...

Sexual behavior is activated by motivation. An overwhelming majority of experimental studies of the intricacies of sexual motivation has been performed in rodents, most of them in rats. Sometimes it is desirable to generalize results obtained in this species to other species, particularly the human. It is hoped that studies of the neurobiology of rodent sexual behavior may shed light on the central ...

Mind wandering (MW) is a heterogeneous construct involving task-unrelated thoughts. Recently, the interest in modulating MW propensity via non-invasive brain stimulation techniques has increased. Single-session transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in healthy controls has led to mixed results in modulating MW propensity, possibly due to methodological heterogeneity. Therefore, our aim was ...

This chapter focuses on the topic of character portrayals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in film and TV-series. We address this topic by presenting research from the general psychiatric field before we discuss the research on portrayals of characters with ASD. We will also provide the reader with some examples of films and TV-series that have been given particular attention in the popular media ...

Following theories of emotional embodiment, the facial feedback hypothesis suggests that individuals’ subjective experiences of emotion are influenced by their facial expressions. However, evidence for this hypothesis has been mixed. We thus formed a global adversarial collaboration and carried out a preregistered, multicentre study designed to specify and test the conditions that should most reliably ...

Domestic chicks (Gallus gallus domesticus) have been widely used as a model to study the motion cues that allow visually naïve organisms to detect animate agents shortly after hatching/birth. Our previous work has shown that chicks prefer to approach agents whose main body axis and motion direction are aligned (a feature typical of creatures whose motion is constrained by a bilaterally symmetric ...

Neuronal growth regulator 1 (NEGR1) belongs to the immunoglobulin (IgLON) superfamily of cell adhesion molecules involved in cortical layering. Recent functional and genomic studies implicate the role of NEGR1 in a wide spectrum of psychiatric disorders, such as major depression, schizophrenia and autism. Here, we investigated the impact of <i>Negr1</i> deficiency on brain morphology, neuronal ...

One of the consequences of sexual behavior is reproduction. Thus, this behavior is essential for the survival of the species. However, the individual engaged in sexual behavior is rarely aware of its reproductive consequences. In fact, the human is probably the only species in which sexual acts may be performed with the explicit purpose of reproduction. Most human sexual activities as well as sex ...