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There is increasing evidence to show that compassion and altruism are highly beneficial when cultivated from an early age. In the present study we explore the benefits of an intervention programme that seeks to develop affective empathy, compassion and altruism in 9-year-old children from a school of Buenos Aires, Argentina. A pretest-posttest controlled study was carried out with 48 children, half of whom carried out the intervention. The remaining children, who constituted the waitlist group, participated in academic tutoring activities conducted by the same research team. The intervention was successful in promoting children's altruistic and compassionate attitudes, evidenced by the results obtained in the universal altruism test, social integration, and affective response. Effect sizes ranged from medium to large in the intervention group. These positive findings were not observed in the waitlist group (non-significant effect sizes). This study shows that children's self-awareness and awareness of others tend to foster compassion and affective empathy, contributing to individual and collective well-being.

Shoulder complex stability can be estimated in vivo through the analysis of helical axes (HAs) dispersion during upper limb movements. The study aimed at investigating test–retest reliability of shoulder HAs dispersion parameters during upper limb tasks. Twenty healthy volunteers performed 2 intransitive (shoulder flexion and rotation) and one transitive (combing) tasks with the dominant and nondominant upper limbs during 2 recording sessions at 1-week distance. Kinematics was detected through an optoelectronic system. Mean distance and mean angle (MA) were adopted as HAs dispersion indexes. Reliability was excellent for mean distance (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC]:.91) and MA (ICC:.92) during dominant flexion, and good for MA (ICC:.90) during nondominant flexion. Moderate reliability was found for HAs parameters during rotation (ICCs from.70 to.59), except for MA during dominant rotation where reliability was poor. Reliability was good for mean distance (ICC:.83) and moderate for MA (ICC:.67) during the dominant combing task, whereas no reliability was found during the nondominant combing task. HAs dispersion parameters revealed high reliability during simple intransitive tasks with the dominant limb. Reliability decreased with the increase in task complexity due to the increase in movement variability. HAs dispersion technique could be used to assess shoulder complex stability in patients after rehabilitation or surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This investigation evaluates whether an intervention involving mindfulness-based practices, socio-affective activities, and socio-cognitive instances can foster prosocial attitudes and positive social relationships and reduce perceived stress in children. Method: The study was conducted with 44 children (20 girls and 24 boys) aged between 6 and 8 (M= 7.25 years, SD= 0.43), and followed a quasi experimental wait list design with two measurement time points (pre and post intervention). We analyzed relative changes in social integration, universal altruism and perceived stress levels. Results: Our results revealed that children who participated in the intervention showed an enhancement in social integration and universal altruism tests, and a decrease in the perceived stress indices. That is, children chose more peers as playmates and rejected fewer of them, while evidencing more prosocial attitudes. Discussion and Conclusion: Our findings suggest that this kind of intervention can contribute to fostering social integration and prosociality while promoting children's health and wellbeing from an early age.

Music has been reported to facilitate motor performance. However, there is no data on the effects of different acoustic environmental stimuli on manual dexterity. The present observational study aimed at investigating the effects of background music and noise on a manual dexterity task in young, middle-aged and elderly subjects. Sixty healthy, right-handed subjects aged between 18 and 80 years were enrolled. Twenty young (mean age: 22±2 years), 20 middle-aged (mean age: 55±8 years) and 20 elderly (mean age: 72±5 years) subjects performed the Nine Hole Peg Test (NHPT) in four different acoustic environments: silence (noise < 20dBA), classical music at 60dBA, rock music at 70 dBA, and a noise stimulus at 80dBA. Performance was recorded using an optical motion capture system and retro-reflective markers (SMART DX, 400, BTS). Outcome measures included the total test time and peg-grasp, peg-transfer, peg-in-hole, hand-return, and removing phases times. Normalized jerk, mean and peak of velocity during transfer and return phases were also computed. No differences were found for NHPT phases and total times, normalized jerk, peak of velocity and mean velocity between four acoustic conditions (p>0.05). Between-group differences were found for NHPT total time, where young subjects revealed better performance than elderly (p˂0.001) and middle-aged (p˂0.001) groups. Music and noise stimuli in the considered range of intensity had no influence on the execution of a manual dexterity task in young, middle-aged and elderly subjects. These findings may have implications for working, sportive and rehabilitative activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Action observation and motor imagery (AOMI) are commonly delivered through a laptop screen. Immersive virtual reality (VR) may enhance the observer's embodiment, a factor that may boost AOMI effects. The study aimed to investigate the effects on manual dexterity of AOMI delivered through immersive VR compared to AOMI administered through a laptop. To evaluate whether VR can enhance the effects of AOMI, forty-five young volunteers were enrolled and randomly assigned to the VR-AOMI group, who underwent AOMI through immersive VR, the AOMI group, who underwent AOMI through a laptop screen, or the control group, who observed landscape video clips. All participants underwent a 5-day treatment, consisting of 12 min per day. We investigated between and within-group differences after treatments relative to functional manual dexterity tasks using the Purdue Pegboard Test (PPT). This test included right hand (R), left hand (L), both hands (B), R + L + B, and assembly tasks. Additionally, we analyzed kinematics parameters including total and sub-phase duration, peak and mean velocity, and normalized jerk, during the Nine-Hole Peg Test to examine whether changes in functional scores may also occur through specific kinematic patterns. Participants were assessed at baseline (T0), after the first training session (T1), and at the end of training (T2). A significant time by group interaction and time effects were found for PPT, where both VR-AOMI and AOMI groups improved at the end of training. Larger PPT-L task improvements were found in the VR-AOMI group (d: 0.84, CI95: 0.09–1.58) compared to the AOMI group from T0 to T1. Immersive VR used for the delivery of AOMI speeded up hand dexterity improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research is motivated by two inter‐related arguments. Humour and cartooning in children are useful means to (1) address sensitive socio‐political issues and (2) foster empathic concern and perspective‐taking. Humorous cartoons and multimodal narratives were created by 10–13‐year olds in school workshops about social inequality and social empathy. Students made cartoons related to concrete situations of economic, gender, racial and ethnic inequality. Children showed empathic concern towards the victims depicted, evidenced by representing positive empathy between characters or by denouncing a lack of empathy. This research suggests that composing humorous multimodal narratives can favour immersive experiences, perspective‐taking, empathy and pro‐sociality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is an editorial titled "Towards an enactive approach to health: an integrative perspective which considers interdependence, agency, autonomy and participatory sensemaking in therapeutic phenomena." It discusses the limitations of the biomedical paradigm in addressing health, which tends to separate mind and body and prioritize objective indicators of disease. The enactive approach, on the other hand, emphasizes the interdependence of living organisms with their environment and the importance of sense-making in health. The editorial highlights several research articles that explore health from an enactive perspective, covering topics such as subjectivity in health assessment, the participatory nature of clinical treatment, and the role of developmental understanding in health. Overall, the studies provide evidence of how the enactive paradigm can contribute to a deeper understanding of human health. [Extracted from the article]

Future space missions to Mars will depend on the development of bioregenerative life support systems. Mars regolith contains most of the nutrients needed for plant growth, but not organic matter (OM). Although Mars simulants have been deeply characterized and tested as growing media, no data are available about their possible modification occurring during terraforming, including the interaction of exogeneous OM with iron (Fe) oxides, particularly abundant in Mars regolith. The aim of this study was to investigate the mineral transformation and the OM evolution occurring in the early stages of the terraforming process. Potato was grown for 99 days on Mojave Mars Simulant MMS-1, alone (R100) and mixed with a compost 70:30 v:v (R70C30), and on a fluvial sand, alone (S100) and mixed with compost (S70C30), for comparison. Bulk (BK) and potato tubero/rhizo-sphere (RH) soils were fractionated to obtain particulate OM (POM) and mineral-associated OM (MAOM). Bulk samples and corresponding fractions were characterized for total nitrogen and organic carbon (C) and analyzed by Fe K-edge X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectroscopy. Organic C increased by 10 and 25 times in S70C30 and R70C30, respectively, compared to S100 and R100. Most of the organic C accumulated in the POM fraction of both growing substrates, while its content in the MAOM was 3 times higher in R70C30 than in S70C30. No significant differences between BK and RH were found. Finally, ferrihydrite mediated exogenous OM stabilization in regolith-based substrates, while Fe(III)-OM complexes were detected exclusively in sand-based growing media. Understanding mechanisms and testing potential sustainable practices for creating Mars regolith similar to terrestrial soil will be fundamental to sustain food crop production on Mars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]