This study evaluated the effects of a single exercise session of Self-Myofascial Release (SMR) on the posterior muscular chain flexibility after one hour from the intervention. Thirty-six participants performed SMR using a rigid ball under the surface of both feet. Participants were tested with the Sit and Reach (S&R) test at four different times: before (T0), immediately after (T1), 30 (T2), and 60 (T3) minutes after the SMR intervention. The sample (n = 36) was categorized into three groups: (1) flexible, (2) average, and (3) stiff, based on the flexibility level at T0 (S&R values of >10 cm, >0 but <10 cm and <0 cm, respectively). For the whole sample, we detected significant improvements in the S&R test between the T1, T2, and T3 compared to T0. The stiff group showed a significant (p < 0.05) improvement between T1–T2 and T1–T3. Results were similar between the average group and the whole sample. The flexible group did not show any significant difference (p > 0.05) over time. In conclusion, this investigation demonstrated that an SMR session of both feet was able to increase posterior muscular chain flexibility up to one hour after intervention. Considering that a standard training session generally lasts one hour, our study can help professionals take advantage of SMR effects for the entire training period. Furthermore, our results also demonstrate that physical exercise practitioners should also assess individuals’ flexibility before training, as the SMR procedure used in this work does not seem necessary in flexible individuals.

The massive spread of fake news (FN) requires a better understanding of both risks and protective psychological factors underlying vulnerability to misinformation. Prior studies have mostly dealt with news that do not bear any direct personal relevance to participants. Here, we ask whether high-stakes news topics may decrease vulnerability to FN. Data were collected during the national lockdown in Italy (COVID-19 news) and one year later (political news). We compared truth discrimination and overall belief for true news (TN) and FN concerning COVID-19 and political topics. Our findings indicate that psychological risk and protective factors have similar effects on truth discrimination, regardless of whether the news topic is highly or minimally personally relevant. However, we found different effects of psychological factors on overall belief, for high and low personal relevance. These results suggest that, given a high level of cognitive dissonance, individuals tend to rely on proximal or emotional sources of information. In summary, our study underscores the importance of understanding the psychological factors that contribute to vulnerability to misinformation, particularly in high-stakes news contexts.

The perception of threatening facial expressions is a critical skill necessary for detecting the emotional states of others and responding appropriately. The anger superiority effect hypothesis suggests that individuals are better at processing and identifying angry faces compared with other nonthreatening facial expressions. In adults, the anger superiority effect is present even after controlling for the bottom-up visual saliency, and when ecologically valid stimuli are used. However, it is as yet unclear whether this effect is present in children. To fill this gap, we tested the anger superiority effect in children ages 6–14 years in a visual search task by using emotional dynamic stimuli and equating the visual salience of target and distractors. The results suggest that in childhood, the angry superiority effect consists of improved accuracy in detecting angry faces, while in adolescence, the ability to discriminate angry faces undergoes further development, enabling faster and more accurate threat detection.

The projection system, a complex organization of ascending and descending white matter pathways, is the principal system for conveying sensory and motor information, connecting frontal and sensorimotor regions with ventral regions of the central nervous system. The corticospinal tract (CST), one of the principal projection pathways, carries distal movement-related information from the cortex to the spinal cord, and whether its microstructure is linked to the kinematics of hand movements is still an open question. The aim of the present study was to explore how microstructure of descending branches of the projection system, namely the hand motor tract (HMT), the corticospinal tract (CST) and its sector within the internal capsule (IC), can relate to the temporal profile of reaching and reach-to-grasp movements. Projection pathways of 31 healthy subjects were virtually dissected by means of diffusion tractography and the kinematics of reaching and reach-to-grasp movements were also analyzed. A positive association between Hindrance Modulated Orientation Anisotropy (HMOA) and kinematics was observed, suggesting that anisotropy of the considered tract can influence the temporal unfolding of motor performance. We highlight, for the first time, that hand kinematics and the visuomotor transformation processes underlying reaching and reach-to-grasp movements relate to the microstructure of specific projection fibers subserving these movements.