Biology subjects

D'Ausilio, A.

Publications and source records attributed to D'Ausilio, A..

7 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Neural and behavioural manifold dynamics align across interacting individuals

Coordinating actions with others is fundamental for social behaviour, requiring the nervous system to continuously adapt motor output to a partner's evolving behaviour. Yet the neural population principles supporting such coordination remain poorly understood. To address this, we investigated interpersonal coordination across two dual-EEG studies comprising 44 dyads (88 participants) engaged in either instructed finger movement synchronization or spontaneous face-to-face interaction. Combining kinematics-informed deep contrastive learning with dynamical-systems modelling, we identified low-dimensional neural manifolds. These manifolds aligned geometrically and temporally across interacting partners, mirrored their coordinated behaviour, and uncovered interpersonal alignment not captured by traditional synchrony measures. Importantly, these manifolds exhibited flexible attractor-like organization consistent with a synergistic, dynamical account of motor control, with attractor properties that were co-regulated across partners. Collectively, we propose a novel mechanism in which interpersonal coordination emerges through the intermittent updating of internally organized dynamics by a partner's movements. More broadly, our results establish movement-informed latent-space modeling as a framework for uncovering the low-dimensional population dynamics linking neural activity, neuromuscular control and interpersonal coordination.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Evidence of predictive information compression in latent space in humans during speech listening

Speech perception requires transforming acoustic input into neural representations that support linguistic understanding, yet its underlying computational principles remain unclear. Classical efficient coding theories posit optimal compression of sensory input, whereas alternative accounts propose that neural systems preferentially encode information that supports prediction. A key open question is whether such predictive encoding operates on fixed inputs or on flexible internal representations. We instantiated three hypothesis models of speech processing: (i) optimal compression with deep autoencoders, (ii) predictive reconstruction with predictive autoencoders, and (iii) predictive information representation via latent-space prediction using contrastive learning. We compared resulting speech latent representations to electroencephalographic (EEG) activity during speech listening. Representations learned under the predictive information objective best explained neural latents. Crucially, only representations that selectively compressed predictive information predicted behavioral performance, suggesting that neural speech representations are structured to encode predictive information in latent space rather than to maximize compression or input prediction.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Microscopic Motor Alterations in Psychosis and Chronic Cannabis Use

Background and HypothesisMotor alterations represent an important component of psychotic disorders. Chronic cannabis use, a key risk factor for psychosis, is also associated with sensorimotor dysfunctions. Yet, the hypothesis of a common sensorimotor disturbance remains underinvestigated. Study Design.In this study, we examined submovements, elementary units of motor output, to search for common subclinical impairments in these populations. Patients with psychosis (n = 17), heavy cannabis users (n = 21), and healthy controls (n = 17) performed a continuous visuomotor synchronization task, consisting in tracking a dot moving on a screen with a finger. Study Results.Individuals with psychosis and cannabis users exhibited less frequent and more variable submovements compared with healthy controls. Furthermore, when interacting with a pre-recorded human kinematic profile, both groups exhibited attenuated responses to the observed submovements. This alteration was found to be more pronounced in patients with psychosis. Conclusions.These findings suggest that submovement analysis may reveal subtle, shared alterations in sensorimotor integration in psychosis and chronic cannabis use, providing an objective window onto motor dysfunction not readily captured by current clinical tools.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Alpha and beta cortico-motor synchronization shape visuomotor control on a single-trial basis

A central question in sensorimotor neuroscience is how sensory inputs are mapped onto motor outputs to enable swift and accurate responses, even in the face of unexpected environmental changes. In this study, we leverage cortico-motor phase synchronization as a window into the dynamics of sensorimotor loops and explore how it relates to online visuomotor control. We recorded brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG) while participants performed an isometric tracking task that involved transient, unpredictable visual perturbations. Our results show that synchronization between cortical activity and motor output (force) in the alpha band (8-13 Hz) is associated with faster motor responses, while beta-band synchronization (18-30 Hz) promotes more accurate control, which is in turn linked to a higher likelihood of obtaining rewards. Both effects are most pronounced immediately before perturbation onset, underscoring the predictive value of cortico-motor phase synchronization for sensorimotor performance. Single-trial analyses further reveal that deviations from the preferred cortico-motor phase relationship are associated with longer reaction times and larger errors, and these phase effects are independent of power effects. Thus, beta-band synchronization may reflect a cautious, reward-oriented control strategy, while alpha-band synchronization enables quicker, though not necessarily efficient, motor responses, indicating a complementary, more reactive control mode. These results highlight the finely tuned nature of sensorimotor control, where different aspects of sensory-to-motor transformations are governed by frequency-specific neural synchronization on a moment-to-moment basis. By linking neural dynamics to motor output, this study sheds light on the spectrotemporal organization of sensorimotor networks and their distinct contribution to goal-directed behavior.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

Interpersonal synchronization of movement intermittency

Most animal species group together and coordinate their behavior in quite sophisticated manners for mating, hunting or defense purposes. In humans, coordination at a macroscopic level (the pacing of movements) is evident both in daily life (e.g., walking) and skilled (e.g., music and dance) behaviors. By examining the fine structure of movement, we here show that interpersonal coordination is established also at a microscopic - sub-movement - level. Natural movements appear as marked by recurrent (2-3 Hz) speed breaks, i.e., submovements, that are traditionally considered the result of intermittency in (visuo)motor control. In a series of interpersonal motor coordination tasks, we demonstrate that submovements are not independent between interacting partners but produced in a tight temporal relation that reflects the directionality in the partners informational coupling. These findings unveil a potential core mechanism for behavioral coordination that is based on between-persons synchronization of the intrinsic dynamics of action-perception cycles.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Cortico-motor control dynamics orchestrates visual sampling

Movements overtly sample sensory information, making sensory analysis an active-sensing process. In this study, we show that visual information sampling is not just locked to the (overt) movement dynamics, but it is structured by the internal (covert) dynamics of cortico-motor control. We asked human participants to perform an isometric motor task - based on proprioceptive feedback - while detecting unrelated near-threshold visual stimuli. The motor output (Force) shows zero-lag coherence with brain activity (recorded via electroencephalography) in the beta-band, as previously reported. In contrast, cortical rhythms in the alpha-band systematically forerun the motor output by 200ms. Importantly, visual detection is facilitated when cortico-motor alpha (not beta) synchronization is enhanced immediately before stimulus onset, namely at the optimal phase relationship for sensorimotor communication. These findings demonstrate an automatic gating of visual inputs by the ongoing motor control processes, providing evidence of an internal and alpha-cycling visuomotor loop.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Cortical tracking of speech reveals top-down reconstructive processes

Cortical entrainment to the (quasi-) rhythmic components of speech seems to play an important role in speech comprehension. It has been suggested that neural entrainment may reflect top-down temporal predictions of sensory signals. Key properties of a predictive model are its anticipatory nature and its ability to reconstruct missing information. Here we put both these two properties to experimental test. We acoustically presented sentences and measured cortical entrainment to both acoustic speech envelope and lips kinematics acquired from the speaker but not visible to the participants. We then analyzed speech-brain and lips-brain coherence at multiple negative and positive lags. Besides the well-known cortical entrainment to the acoustic speech envelope, we found significant entrainment in the delta range to the (latent) lips kinematics. Most interestingly, the two entrainment phenomena were temporally dissociated. While entrainment to the acoustic speech peaked around +0.3 s lag (i.e., when EEG followed speech by 0.3 s), entrainment to the lips was significantly anticipated and peaked around 0-0.1 s lag (i.e., when EEG was virtually synchronous to the putative lips movement). Our results demonstrate that neural entrainment during speech listening involves the anticipatory reconstruction of missing information related to lips movement production, indicating its fundamentally predictive nature and thus supporting analysis by synthesis models.

neuroscience↗