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Manuel Mello

@mmellon.bsky.social

71 followers 53 following 35 posts

Postdoctoral researcher at the Institut des Sciences Cognitives 'Marc Jeannerod', CNRS, Lyon. 👀 Interested in social perception in typical and atypical development 🧠 I image all kinds of brains 🤖 Trying to get into neuro computational modeling and AI

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Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · 15d

👀 Interacting or non-interacting: that is the research question...

📢 New pre-print out on social interaction perception in preverbal infants: osf.io/preprints/ps.... In collaboration with @Emilie Serraille, @jrhochmann.bsky.social and @ljubapi.bsky.social.

🧵 An animated thread 👇

#neuroskyence

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Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · 13d

🤓 Here you can find the first article of the series, published in Autism: doi.org/10.1177/1362....

🤓 And here is a collaborative effort together with @hleemasson.bsky.social, @kerenmaclennan.bsky.social, and Macy Li on a very similar project: doi.org/10.31234/osf....

Cheers!

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Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · 13d

Both analyses approaches showed that attitudes toward social touch represents a central disposition contributing to lower levels of social touch erogeneity, pleasantness, and appropriateness in autistic individuals. These mediation relationships were stronger in autistic male participants.

Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · 13d

We implemented exploratory network analysis and moderated parallel mediation analyses considering a number of individual dispositions. We investigated how these might impact group differences in social touch experiences, and evaluated how sex assigned at birth might moderate these relationships.

Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · 13d

AND 🗣️ new paper out in JADD: "Centrality of touch avoidance in social touch experiences in autism". In collaboration with the @scnl-agliotilab.bsky.social.

👉 rdcu.be/eH3H5

The second of the series aimed at elucidating how autistic adults perceive social touch.

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Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · 15d

7/7 These findings indicate that, early in life, the human brain is attuned to visual cues of social engagement. We propose that recognizing human interactions depends on perceptual mechanisms that use relational cues, such as face-to-face orientation.

Go check it out!
doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · 15d

6/7 👶 Infants displayed the same effect in posterior parieto-occipito-temporal regions, including the pSTS. This social-interaction effect was distinct from that of body motion perception, suggesting separate mechanisms for perceiving general biological agents versus interacting agents.

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Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · 15d

5/7 👩‍🦰🧑 We report that, in adults, interacting (vs. non-interacting) dyads yielded increased activity in posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and adjacent occipitotemporal and temporoparietal regions, replicating established neuroimaging findings.

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Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · 15d

4/7 🧠 Human neuroimaging has identified a posterior occipitotemporal pathway, originating in the visual cortex, that responds selectively to interacting (vs. non-interacting) people by representing features (e.g., spatial relations) relevant to social event categorization.

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Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · 15d

3/7 We investigated the visual processing of social interactions in adults and preverbal infants using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).

Left: Me, setting up the fNIRS caps; Right: Dynamic point-light display showing an interacting dyad.

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Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · 15d

2/7 👧🧒 Children exhibit incredible social cognitive abilities. Already in the first months of life, infants show sophistication in representing social events, including third-party dyadic interactions. What neural structures and mechanisms underlie these abilities?

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Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · 15d

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Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · Sep 5

Congrats! Sounds super interesting!

Reposted by Manuel Mello

Haemy Lee Masson @hleemasson.bsky.social · Jun 26

‼️ Preprint alert ‼️
Led by master's student Macy, with collaboration from @kerenmaclennan.bsky.social and @mmellon.bsky.social.

Link: osf.io/preprints/ps...

1. Autistic adults engage in social touch as frequently as non-autistic adults, with similar satisfaction.

OSF

osf.io

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Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · May 26

Wow, all the shelf tags fit in what I like. This is going straight to my Want to read 😍

Reposted by Manuel Mello

Liuba Papeo @ljubapi.bsky.social · May 21

You wouldn’t drink from a glass if a fish is IN the glass, or would not grab a chair if one is already sitting ON it.
How do we represent relations between things? And how does it relate to object and action recognition?
New paper out osf.io/preprints/ps...
@mmellon.bsky.social

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Manuel Mello @mmellon.bsky.social · Apr 16

I am honoured to have received the Doctoral Thesis Award from La Sapienza University, accompanied by the publication of my thesis by Sapienza Università Editrice, available in open access here: doi.org/10.13133/978...