Background: Humans exhibit a remarkable ability to synchronize their actions with external auditory stimuli through a process called auditory–motor or rhythmic entrainment. Positive effects of rhythmic entrainment have been demonstrated in adults with neurological movement disorders, yet the neural substrates supporting the transformation of auditory input into timed rhythmic motor outputs are not fully understood. We aimed to systematically map and synthesize the research on the neural correlates of auditory–motor entrainment and synchronization. Methods: Following the PRISMA-ScR guidelines for scoping reviews, a systematic search was conducted across four databases (MEDLINE, Embase, PsycInfo, and Scopus) for articles published between 2013 and 2023. Results: From an initial return of 1430 records, 22 studies met the inclusion criteria and were synthesized based on the neuroimaging modality. There is converging evidence that auditory–motor synchronization engages bilateral cortical and subcortical networks, including the supplementary motor area, premotor cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. Specifically, the supplementary motor area and the basal ganglia are essential for beat-based timing and internally guided rhythmic movements, while the cerebellum plays an important role in tracking and processing complex rhythmic patterns and synchronizing to the external beat. Self-paced tapping is associated with additional activations in the prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia, suggesting that tapping in the absence of auditory cues requires more neural resources. Lastly, existing studies indicate that movement rate and the type of music further modulate the EEG power in the alpha and beta frequency bands. Conclusions: These findings are discussed in the context of clinical implications and rhythm-based therapies.

To decide how to move around the world, we must determine which locomotive actions (e.g., walking, swimming, or climbing) are afforded by the immediate visual environment. The neural basis of our ability to recognize locomotive affordances is unknown. Here, we compare human behavioral annotations, functional MRI (fMRI) measurements, and deep neural network (DNN) activations to both indoor and outdoor real-world images to demonstrate that the human visual cortex represents locomotive action affordances in complex visual scenes. Hierarchical clustering of behavioral annotations of six possible locomotive actions show that humans group environments into distinct affordance clusters using at least three separate dimensions. Representational similarity analysis of multivoxel fMRI responses in the scene-selective visual cortex shows that perceived locomotive affordances are represented independently from other scene properties such as objects, surface materials, scene category, or global properties and independent of the task performed in the scanner. Visual feature activations from DNNs trained on object or scene classification as well as a range of other visual understanding tasks correlate comparatively lower with behavioral and neural representations of locomotive affordances than with object representations. Training DNNs directly on affordance labels or using affordance-centered language embeddings increases alignment with human behavior, but none of the tested models fully captures locomotive action affordance perception. These results uncover a type of representation in the human brain that reflects locomotive action affordances.

Maternal-foetal bonding represents a bond that a mother has with her foetus. This study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the Prenatal Attachment Inventory (PAI) in Croatian pregnant women. Adult pregnant women (N = 850) between 13 and 28 weeks of pregnancy filled out the PAI, Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), anxiety subscale of the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21), and Pregnancy Concerns Scale (PCS). Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) have shown that the hypothesised factor structures from previous studies demonstrated poor model fit. Subsequently, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted on half of the sample (n = 425) and revealed a two-factor structure. However, this was not confirmed by the CFA on the other half of the sample. Because the items mainly referred to baby movement, the process was repeated in a sub-sample of women pregnant 20 weeks or more (n = 502), with EFA and CFA conducted on half of the sub-sample. In the EFA, 21 items were reduced to 13, with three factors identified. In the CFA, we accepted the higher-order factor model with three first-order factors: Affection towards the foetus, Familiarity with foetal movement and behaviour, and Fantasising about the foetus. The total scale and three subscales demonstrated high reliability, good divergent validity, and adequate discriminant validity. Prenatal Attachment Inventory with 13 items has good psychometric properties when applied after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Further research is needed to establish valid measures for early maternal-foetal bonding