Biology subjects

Diano, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Diano, M..

6 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Higher-order topology uncovers the multidimensional dynamics of naturalistic emotion

Emotions are thought to emerge from co-activation among distributed brain systems, yet traditional fMRI analyses typically examine localized responses and pairwise connections, potentially overlooking interactions among groups of regions. Here, we use time-resolved higher-order topology to characterize these group interactions during naturalistic viewing of 14 films totaling over 2.5 h, continuously annotated across 50 affective features. The homological scaffold, representing evolving group-level topology, most closely tracks recurrent emotional states and best predicts fine-grained affective profiles. This sensitivity diminishes when emotion is compressed into dimensions of valence, arousal, and power, where pairwise connectivity captures the dominant arousal signal. Across three independent datasets, arousal predictions transfer most robustly through pairwise connectivity, while the relative geometry of broad affective states remains conserved across film narratives despite poor valence generalization. These findings reveal complementary neural representations of emotion: higher-order topology captures fine-grained affective structure, whereas pairwise connectivity provides a portable readout of broad arousal.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Preserved brain hierarchy supports residual vision without awareness after visual cortex damage

Damage to the primary visual cortex causes loss of conscious vision, yet some patients retain the ability to respond to stimuli despite reporting no visual experience. Why similar lesions produce such different behavioral phenotypes remains unclear. While research to date has focused primarily on spared pathways that bypass V1, here we asked whether these divergent outcomes are also linked to the brain's intrinsic functional architecture. In the largest resting-state fMRI cohort of patients with unilateral V1 damage reported to date, we quantified information sharing between regions across cortical and subcortical parcels in blindsight-positive and blindsight-negative patients, as well as in age-matched healthy controls. Despite comparable lesions, the two patient groups displayed distinct hierarchical patterns on the cortex: B+ patients preserved a sensory-to-association organization as in healthy controls, whereas B- patients exhibited a marked flattening of this hierarchy. The effect was driven by abnormally low shared-information coupling within unimodal cortices and scaled continuously with single-subject behavioral blind-field detection performance. A thalamic region consistent with the pulvinar, linking the contralesional visual cortex and the frontal eye field, discriminated B+ from B- patients. These findings highlight the system-level consequences of V1 damage supporting blindsight, suggesting that the unimodal-transmodal axis might track not only global states of consciousness, but also whether sensory information can guide behavior without awareness.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Beyond Pairwise Interactions: Charting Higher-Order Models of Brain Function

Traditional models of brain connectivity have primarily focused on pairwise interactions, over-looking the rich dynamics that emerge from simultaneous interactions among multiple brain regions. Although a plethora of higher-order interaction (HOI) metrics have been proposed, a systematic evaluation of their comparative properties and utility is missing. Here, we present the first large-scale analysis of information-theoretic and topological HOI metrics, applied to both resting-state and task fMRI data from 100 unrelated subjects of the Human Connectome Project. We identify a clear taxonomy of HOI metrics -- redundant, synergistic, and topological--, with the latter acting as bridges along the redundancy-synergy continuum. Despite methodological differences, all HOI metrics align with the brains overarching unimodal-to-transmodal functional hierarchy. However, certain metrics show specific associations with the neurotransmitter receptor architecture. HOI metrics outperform traditional pairwise models in brain fingerprinting and perform comparably in task decoding, underscoring their value for characterizing individual functional profiles. Finally, multivariate analysis reveals that -- among all HOI metrics -- topological descriptors are key to linking brain function with behavioral variability, positioning them as valuable tools for linking neural architecture and cognitive function. Overall, our findings establish HOIs as a powerful framework for capturing the brains multidimensional dynamics, providing a conceptual map to guide their application across cognitive and clinical neuroscience.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Abstract, modality-specific and experience-dependent coding of affect in the human brain

Emotion and perception are tightly intertwined, as affective experiences often arise from the appraisal of sensory information. Nonetheless, whether the brain encodes emotional instances using a sensory-specific code or in a more abstract manner is unclear. Here, we answer this question by measuring the association between emotion ratings collected during a unisensory or multisensory presentation of a full-length movie and brain activity recorded in typically-developed, congenitally blind and congenitally deaf participants. Emotional instances are encoded in a vast network encompassing sensory, prefrontal, and temporal cortices. Within this network, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex stores a categorical representation of emotion independent of modality and experience, and the posterior superior temporal cortex maps valence using an abstract code. Sensory experience more than modality impacts how the brain organizes emotional information outside supramodal regions, suggesting the existence of a scaffold for the representation of emotional states where sensory inputs during development shape its functioning.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

A modality independent proto-organization of human multisensory areas

The processing of multisensory information is based upon the capacity of brain regions, such as the superior temporal cortex, to combine information across modalities. However, it is still unclear whether the representation of coherent auditory and visual events does require any prior audiovisual experience to develop and function. In three fMRI experiments, intersubject correlation analysis measured brain synchronization during the presentation of an audiovisual, audio-only or video-only versions of the same narrative in distinct groups of sensory-deprived (congenitally blind and deaf) and typically-developed individuals. The superior temporal cortex synchronized across auditory and visual conditions, even in sensory-deprived individuals who lack any audiovisual experience. This synchronization was primarily mediated by low-level perceptual features and relied on a similar modality-independent topographical organization of temporal dynamics. The human superior temporal cortex is naturally endowed with a functional scaffolding to yield a common representation across multisensory events.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2017

Gender-specific brain activation during visual art perception

The human body is the most common object of pictorial representation in western art. The goal of this study was to probe its evolutionary basis of visual art perception by investigating neural markers of gender-specific brain activity triggered by paintings of male and female images. Our results show significant activity in brain areas other than those recently associated with visual arts perception. Novel findings concern participant-general as well as gender specific brain activity. Although our participants were fully aware that they were viewing artworks, the inferior parietal lobule - known for its role in the perception of emotional body images - and the somatosensory cortex - which is related to touch - were selectively active for female body paintings in all participants. The most interesting finding as regards gender was that the sight of female bodies activates the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex in males, an area known to subserve autonomic arousal. In contrast, in females the sight of the male body activated reward and control related parts of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. This supports the notion that basic evolutionary processes operate when we view body images, also when they are paintings far removed from daily experience.

neuroscience↗