Biological motion (BM) is one of the most important social stimuli because, even if implicitly perceived, it is advantageous for survival. As the processing of social stimuli and the orienting of attention are impaired in People with Multiple Sclerosis (PwMS), we aimed at investigating how the implicit processing of BM cues influences visuo-spatial attention in this group of patients versus healthy controls (HC). 37 PwMS and 40 HC performed a modified a Posner task, including BM global cues, i.e. human figures resulting from moving lighted dots, or local cues, i.e. two moving dots representing the feet, presented in the centre of a screen and moved to the left or right. Participants also performed a classical Posner task as a screening test. We extracted a sample of 15 PwMS and introduced White Matter lesions volume as covariate for the performance obtained to the two tasks. We found higher Inverse Efficiency Scores (IES) for invalid versus valid trials, for both global and local configurations, in PwMS and HC; however, the effect size was weaker for local configuration in PwMS. A similar pattern was found in the smaller sample of PwMS, where no significant effect was found in local configuration. Results suggest intact orienting of attention in PwMS, unlike local BM stimuli processing, even considering as covariate the White Matter lesions.
The implicit perception of Biological Movement: a study on Multiple Sclerosis and Healthy Controls
Bonventre S.;Graziano F.;De Cesaris M.;Bertoli M.;Tomassini V.;Brunetti M.
2026-01-01
Abstract
Biological motion (BM) is one of the most important social stimuli because, even if implicitly perceived, it is advantageous for survival. As the processing of social stimuli and the orienting of attention are impaired in People with Multiple Sclerosis (PwMS), we aimed at investigating how the implicit processing of BM cues influences visuo-spatial attention in this group of patients versus healthy controls (HC). 37 PwMS and 40 HC performed a modified a Posner task, including BM global cues, i.e. human figures resulting from moving lighted dots, or local cues, i.e. two moving dots representing the feet, presented in the centre of a screen and moved to the left or right. Participants also performed a classical Posner task as a screening test. We extracted a sample of 15 PwMS and introduced White Matter lesions volume as covariate for the performance obtained to the two tasks. We found higher Inverse Efficiency Scores (IES) for invalid versus valid trials, for both global and local configurations, in PwMS and HC; however, the effect size was weaker for local configuration in PwMS. A similar pattern was found in the smaller sample of PwMS, where no significant effect was found in local configuration. Results suggest intact orienting of attention in PwMS, unlike local BM stimuli processing, even considering as covariate the White Matter lesions.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
