Riccardo Dalla Volta

@unimi.it

Dipartimento di Fisiopatologia Medico-Chirurgica e dei Trapianti
Università degli Studi di Milano

Riccardo Dalla Volta


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https://researchid.co/ridallav

RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS

Physiology, Cognitive Neuroscience
22

Scopus Publications

Scopus Publications

  • Corticospinal suppression in response to pics with implied hand actions: A follow up TMS study
    Riccardo Dalla Volta, Francesco Scarfone, Dario Brambilla, Roberto Esposti, Paolo Cavallari
    Brain and Cognition, 2025
    Presentation of bodily actions is known to affect motor system activity in perceivers' brain. A previous study (Gianelli, Kuehne, Lo Presti, Mencaraglia & Dalla Volta, 2020) employing hand-tool interaction with apparent motion showed early suppression of corticospinal excitability in hand muscles. To control for the role of apparent motion and to investigate the suppression duration, in the present follow up study participants observed pics displaying hand-tool actions, with no apparent motion but only implied motion. Single pulse TMS was delivered on the hand sector of the left motor cortex at 1 s after fixation cross (baseline), at 150, 350, 500 and 700 ms from stimulus onset, while motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded from the contralateral first dorsal interosseus muscle. Results showed a difference in MEP amplitude between hand action-related and control pics where hand action observation suppressed corticospinal excitability, suggesting early and enduring motor inhibition. In addition, MEP amplitude decreased over time. These findings rule out a necessary role of apparent motion, indicating that the simple presentation of hand actions with implied motion effectively induced motor inhibition. Corticospinal suppression may act to prevent the motor system from automatically transforming observed actions into overt movements whenever an action is observed.
  • Action processing in the motor system: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) evidence of shared mechanisms in the visual and linguistic modalities
    Claudia Gianelli, Katharina Kühne, Sara Lo Presti, Silvia Mencaraglia, Riccardo Dalla Volta
    Brain and Cognition, 2020
  • The embodiment of language in tremor-dominant Parkinson's disease patients
    Rita Nisticò, Antonio Cerasa, Giuseppe Olivadese, Riccardo Dalla Volta, Marianna Crasà, Roberta Vasta, Vera Gramigna, Basilio Vescio, Gaetano Barbagallo, Carmelina Chiriaco, Andrea Quattrone, Maria Salsone, Fabiana Novellino, Gennarina Arabia, Giuseppe Nicoletti, Maurizio Morelli, Aldo Quattrone
    Brain and Cognition, 2019
  • From meaning to categorization: The hierarchical recruitment of brain circuits selective for action verbs
    Riccardo Dalla Volta, Pietro Avanzini, Doriana De Marco, Maurizio Gentilucci, Maddalena Fabbri-Destro
    Cortex, 2018
  • Processing graspable object images and their nouns is impaired in Parkinson's disease patients
    Giovanni Buccino, Riccardo Dalla Volta, Gennarina Arabia, Maurizio Morelli, Carmelina Chiriaco, Angela Lupo, Franco Silipo, Aldo Quattrone
    Cortex, 2018
  • Walking indoors, walking outdoors: An fMRI study
    Riccardo Dalla Volta, Fabrizio Fasano, Antonio Cerasa, Graziella Mangone, Aldo Quattrone, Giovanni Buccino
    Frontiers in Psychology, 2015
    An observation/execution matching system for walking has not been assessed yet. The present fMRI study was aimed at assessing whether, as for object-directed actions, an observation/execution matching system is active for walking and whether the spatial context of walking (open or narrow space) recruits different neural correlates. Two experimental conditions were employed. In the execution condition, while being scanned, participants performed walking on a rolling cylinder located just outside the scanner. The same action was performed also while observing a video presenting either an open space (a country field) or a narrow space (a corridor). In the observation condition, participants observed a video presenting an individual walking on the same cylinder on which the actual action was executed, the open space video and the narrow space video, respectively. Results showed common bilateral activations in the dorsal premotor/supplementary motor areas and in the posterior parietal lobe for both execution and observation of walking, thus supporting a matching system for this action. Moreover, specific sectors of the occipital–temporal cortex and the middle temporal gyrus were consistently active when processing a narrow space versus an open one, thus suggesting their involvement in the visuo-motor transformation required when walking in a narrow space. We forward that the present findings may have implications for rehabilitation of gait and sport training.
  • Viewing photos and reading nouns of natural graspable objects similarly modulate motor responses
    Barbara F. M. Marino, Miriam Sirianni, Riccardo Dalla Volta, Fabio Magliocco, Francesco Silipo, Aldo Quattrone, Giovanni Buccino
    Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014
    It is well known that the observation of graspable objects recruits the same motor representations involved in their actual manipulation. Recent evidence suggests that the presentation of nouns referring to graspable objects may exert similar effects. So far, however, it is not clear to what extent the modulation of the motor system during object observation overlaps with that related to noun processing. To address this issue, 2 behavioral experiments were carried out using a go-no go paradigm. Healthy participants were presented with photos and nouns of graspable and non-graspable natural objects. Also scrambled images and pseudowords obtained from the original stimuli were used. At a go-signal onset (150 ms after stimulus presentation) participants had to press a key when the stimulus referred to a real object, using their right (Experiment 1) or left (Experiment 2) hand, and refrain from responding when a scrambled image or a pseudoword was presented. Slower responses were found for both photos and nouns of graspable objects as compared to non-graspable objects, independent of the responding hand. These findings suggest that processing seen graspable objects and written nouns referring to graspable objects similarly modulates the motor system.
  • Does listening to action-related sentences modulate the activity of the motor system? Replication of a combined TMS and behavioral study
    Claudia Gianelli, Riccardo Dalla Volta
    Frontiers in Psychology, 2014
    The neurophysiological and behavioral correlates of action-related language processing have been debated for long time. A precursor in this field was the study by Buccino et al. (2005) combining transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and behavioral measures (reaction times, RTs) to study the effect of listening to hand- and foot-related sentences. In the TMS experiment, the authors showed a decrease of motor evoked potentials (MEPs) recorded from hand muscles when processing hand-related verbs as compared to foot-related verbs. Similarly, MEPs recorded from leg muscles decreased when participants processed foot-related as compared to hand-related verbs. In the behavioral experiment, using the same stimuli and a semantic decision task the authors found slower RTs when the participants used the body effector (hand or foot) involved in the actual execution of the action expressed by the presented verb to give their motor responses. These findings were interpreted as an interference effect due to a simultaneous involvement of the motor system in both a language and a motor task. Our replication aimed to enlarge the sample size and replicate the findings with higher statistical power. The TMS experiment showed a significant modulation of hand MEPs, but in the sense of a motor facilitation when processing hand-related verbs. On the contrary, the behavioral experiment did not show significant results. The results are discussed within the general debate on the time-course of the modulation of motor cortex during implicit and explicit language processing and in relation to the studies on action observation/understanding.
  • Spatiotemporal dynamics during processing of abstract and concrete verbs: An ERP study
    Riccardo Dalla Volta, Maddalena Fabbri-Destro, Maurizio Gentilucci, Pietro Avanzini
    Neuropsychologia, 2014
    Different accounts have been proposed to explain the nature of concept representations. Embodied accounts claim a key involvement of sensory-motor systems during semantic processing while more traditional accounts posit that concepts are abstract mental entities independent of perceptual and motor brain systems. While the involvement of sensory-motor areas in concrete language processing is supported by a large number of studies, this involvement is far from being established when considering abstract language. The present study addressed abstract and concrete verb processing, by investigating the spatiotemporal dynamics of evoked responses by means of high density EEG while participants performed a semantic decision task. In addition, RTs to the same set of stimuli were collected. In both early and late time intervals, ERP scalp topography significantly differed according to word categories. Concrete verbs showed involvement of parieto-frontal networks for action, according to the implied body effector. In contrast, abstract verbs recruited mostly frontal regions outside the motor system, suggesting a non-motor semantic processing for this category. In addition, differently from what has been reported during action observation, the parietal recruitment related to concrete verbs presentation followed the frontal one. The present findings suggest that action word semantic is grounded in sensory-motor systems, provided a bodily effector is specified, while abstract concepts׳ representation cannot be easily explained by a motor embodiment.
  • The dynamics of sensorimotor cortical oscillations during the observation of hand movements: An EEG study
    Pietro Avanzini, Maddalena Fabbri-Destro, Riccardo Dalla Volta, Elena Daprati, Giacomo Rizzolatti, Gaetano Cantalupo
    Plos One, 2012
    Background The observation of action done by others determines a desynchronization of the rhythms recorded from cortical central regions. Here, we examined whether the observation of different types of hand movements (target directed, non-target directed, cyclic and non-cyclic) elicits different EEG cortical temporal patterns. Methodology Video-clips of four types of hand movements were shown to right-handed healthy participants. Two were target directed (grasping and pointing) motor acts; two were non-target directed (supinating and clenching) movements. Grasping and supinating were performed once, while pointing and clenching twice (cyclic movements). High-density EEG was recorded and analyzed by means of wavelet transform, subdividing the time course in time bins of 200 ms. The observation of all presented movements produced a desynchronization of alpha and beta rhythms in central and parietal regions. The rhythms desynchronized as soon as the hand movement started, the nadir being reached around 700 ms after movement onset. At the end of the movement, a large power rebound occurred for all bands. Target and non-target directed movements produced an alpha band desynchronization in the central electrodes at the same time, but with a stronger desynchronization and a prolonged rebound for target directed motor acts. Most interestingly, there was a clear correlation between the velocity profile of the observed movements and beta band modulation. Significance Our data show that the observation of motor acts determines a modulation of cortical rhythm analogous to that occurring during motor act execution. In particular, the cortical motor system closely follows the velocity of the observed movements. This finding provides strong evidence for the presence in humans of a mechanism (mirror mechanism) mapping action observation on action execution motor programs.
  • Social requests and social affordances: How they affect the kinematics of motor sequences during interactions between conspecifics
    Francesca Ferri, Giovanna Cristina Campione, Riccardo Dalla Volta, Claudia Gianelli, Maurizio Gentilucci
    Plos One, 2011
  • To me or to you? When the self is advantaged
    Francesca Ferri, Giovanna Cristina Campione, Riccardo Dalla Volta, Claudia Gianelli, Maurizio Gentilucci
    Experimental Brain Research, 2010
  • Seven years of recording from monkey cortex with a chronically implanted multiple microelectrode
    Jürgen Krüger
    Frontiers in Neuroengineering, 2010
  • The observation of manual grasp actions affects the control of speech: A combined behavioral and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation study
    Maurizio Gentilucci, Giovanna Cristina Campione, Riccardo Dalla Volta, Paolo Bernardis
    Neuropsychologia, 2009
  • Action word understanding and overt motor behavior
    Riccardo Dalla Volta, Claudia Gianelli, Giovanna Cristina Campione, Maurizio Gentilucci
    Experimental Brain Research, 2009
  • How symbolic gestures and words interact with each other
    Filippo Barbieri, Antimo Buonocore, Riccardo Dalla Volta, Maurizio Gentilucci
    Brain and Language, 2009
  • Corrigendum to "Automatic grasp imitation following action observation affects estimation of intrinsic object properties" [Brain Res. 1218 (2008) 166-180] (DOI:10.1016/j.brainres.2008.04.046)
    Claudia Gianelli, Riccardo Dalla Volta, Filippo Barbieri, Maurizio Gentilucci
    Brain Research, 2008
  • Automatic grasp imitation following action observation affects estimation of intrinsic object properties
    Claudia Gianelli, Riccardo Dalla Volta, Filippo Barbieri, Maurizio Gentilucci
    Brain Research, 2008
  • Spoken language and arm gestures are controlled by the same motor control system
    Maurizio Gentilucci, Riccardo Dalla Volta
    Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2008
  • When the hands speak
    Maurizio Gentilucci, Riccardo Dalla Volta, Claudia Gianelli
    Journal of Physiology Paris, 2008
  • On the relations between affordance and representation of the agent's effector
    Filippo Barbieri, Antimo Buonocore, Paolo Bernardis, Riccardo Dalla Volta, Maurizio Gentilucci
    Experimental Brain Research, 2007
  • Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation of Broca's area affects verbal responses to gesture observation
    Maurizio Gentilucci, Paolo Bernardis, Girolamo Crisi, Riccardo Dalla Volta
    Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2006