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Pseudoneglect phenomenon refers to a condition in which healthy subjects tend to perceive the left side of exactly bisected lines as being slightly longer than the right one. However, behavioural data showed that athletes practising an open-skill sport display less pseudoneglect than the general population. Given the fact that so-called exergames (also known as active video games) are platforms designed to fully mimic sport activity, this work intends to investigate whether and how a one-week training period of exergame open-skill sport can determine a similar decrease in pseudoneglect. Fifteen healthy participants (non-athletes) responded to a visuospatial attention task and a control memory task in basal conditions (t0: Pre-game) and after a short period (one week, one hour/day) of tennis exergaming (t1: Post-game). In the Post-game condition, subjects from this experimental group (ExerGame group: EG) reduced leftward space overestimation and made significantly fewer leftward errors compared to the Pre-game condition. Additionally, two other experimental groups were employed: one evaluated within the same conditions of the main experiment but using a non-exergame (Non-Exergame groups: NEG) and the other one without any video game stimulus (Sedentary group: SE). Our findings suggest that daily training of a tennis exergame seems to be able to improve visuospatial attention isotropy by reducing leftward space overestimation, whereas outcomes from non-exergaming and sedentary activity do not modify subjects' performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Haptic perception (HP) is a perceptual modality requiring manual exploration to elaborate the physical characteristics of external stimuli through multisensory integrative cortical pathways. Cortical areas exploit processes of predictive coding that collect sensorial inputs to build and update internal perceptual models. Modifications to the internal representation of the body have been associated with eating disorders. In the light of this, obese subjects were selected as a valid experimental model to explore predictive coding in haptic perception. To this purpose, we performed electroencephalographic (EEG) continuous recordings during a haptic task in normally weighted versus obese subjects. EEG power spectra were analyzed in different time intervals. The quality of haptic performance in the obese group was poorer than in control subjects, though exploration times were similar. Spectral analysis showed a significant decrease in theta, alpha and beta frequencies in the right temporo-parietal areas of obese group, whereas gamma bands significantly increased in the left frontal areas. These results suggest that severe obesity could be characterized by an impairment in haptic performances and an altered activation of multisensory integrative cortical areas. These are involved in functional coding of external stimuli, which could interfere with the ability to process a predicted condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]