A new collection of research in psychophysiology and cognitive neuroscience puts early-career scientists at the centre of the field. The Research Topic, titled Emerging Talents in Human Neuroscience: Psychophysiology and Cognitive Neuroscience 2025, highlights studies led by undergraduate and graduate students and researchers within the first years of their academic careers. According to the editorial introducing the collection, written by Valentina Bruno of the University of Turin and colleagues at institutions including the Karolinska Institutet, the Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod and the Sense Innovation and Research Center in Switzerland, the assembled work showcases the originality and scientific rigour of the next generation of scientists.
The studies in the collection cover the human lifespan and, although they address diverse research questions, the editorial organises them around three complementary perspectives: the adaptive construction of bodily experience, the identification of neural markers of developmental and cognitive vulnerability, and the development of innovative approaches for modulating brain function, cognition and emotional well-being. Together, the editors argue, the contributions illustrate the range of contemporary psychophysiology and cognitive neuroscience and offer a glimpse into future directions of the field, combining experimental rigour with clinical relevance across diverse populations and contexts.
The first perspective concerns how the body’s representation in the mind is built and rebuilt across development, ageing and clinical conditions. Bodily self-representation is increasingly conceptualised as a dynamic process grounded in the integration of multisensory bodily signals and their interaction with internal models of the body. Building on psychophysical and computational approaches previously employed to investigate body representation and multisensory processing, Martinelli and colleagues examined how the sense of body ownership changes with ageing, using a continuous life-span approach that runs from adolescence to old age.
Their findings point to a striking compensatory mechanism: older age is associated with greater reliance on visual information, possibly offsetting the gradual decline in proprioceptive precision, the brain’s diminishing access to the internal sense of limb and body position. Rather than the body schema simply degrading with age, the work suggests the nervous system reweights its sensory channels to maintain a coherent representation of the body. This reframing of ageing as an adaptive reorganisation, rather than a passive loss, exemplifies the kind of conceptual shift the editors highlight throughout the collection.
In parallel, Gentili and coworkers provide a systematic mapping of the last 15 years of research on anorexia nervosa. Their analysis reports a crucial shift in the field: from studies focused primarily on perceived body image and aesthetic evaluation toward more complex paradigms examining multisensory integration and the implicit body schema. This shift reflects a broader reconceptualisation of anorexia nervosa as involving not only disturbances in the conscious evaluation of body appearance, but also alterations in the multisensory processes underlying bodily self-representation. The editors note that this line of work supports the development of interventions that directly target body representations through innovative technology-assisted approaches.
Complementing these perspectives, Bartolini and coworkers provide a mini-review of interceptive skills in visually impaired children, integrating evidence from both paediatric and adult populations. By examining how visual information contributes to the multisensory processes supporting goal-directed interactions between the body and the environment, their work reports how the absence of early visual input may constrain the development of motor coordination and social interaction. The authors emphasise the need for more ecologically valid, multisensory and longitudinal research, while discussing the potential of emerging technologies, such as virtual reality, to support accessible, engaging and individualised rehabilitative interventions. Taken together, the editors write, these studies demonstrate how body representation continuously adapts across development, ageing and clinical conditions.
The second perspective focuses on identifying neural markers of developmental and cognitive vulnerability. Petri and colleagues provide a narrative review showing the complementary role of oscillatory and aperiodic EEG activity in characterising early brain development. By discussing methodological advances, developmental changes and alterations associated with neurodevelopmental disorders, the review emphasises the potential of spectral EEG analyses to advance both basic and clinical neuroscience.
Extending this biomarker perspective to adulthood, Bi and colleagues explored the relationship between hippocampal subfield atrophy and working memory deficits in middle-aged and older cancer patients. Their results revealed reduced volumes in specific hippocampal subfields, particularly CA3 and CA4, while volumes of the hippocampal head and molecular layer were positively associated with working memory performance in cancer patients. This pattern of subfield-specific effects is in line with evidence that distinct hippocampal subregions are differentially vulnerable across disease and ageing, underscoring that the hippocampus should not be treated as a single uniform structure when searching for cognitive biomarkers.
On the intervention side of this second perspective, Li and coworkers demonstrated that auricular acupressure and massage can enhance cognitive functions in night shift nursing staff, a population whose irregular schedules impose a well-known cognitive toll. Changes in P300 parameters, a well-established electrophysiological index associated with attentional and memory-related processes, provided objective evidence supporting the cognitive effects of the intervention. The editors point to these findings as indicating a non-invasive and cost-effective approach to countering the cognitive impact of shift work. Across these contributions, neurophysiological and neuroanatomical markers emerge as increasingly important for understanding cognitive functioning across the lifespan and for guiding future clinical applications.
The third perspective concerns original strategies for modulating brain function, cognition and emotional well-being. Pic Roca and coworkers present a novel protocol to modulate delta oscillations during general anaesthesia using closed-loop auditory stimulation, building on evidence that phase-targeted auditory stimulation can enhance slow oscillatory activity. The technique aims to stabilise the state of unconsciousness without increasing pharmacological doses, opening the possibility of safer and more personalised anaesthesia in which stimulation, rather than additional drugs, helps maintain the desired brain state.
Yamamoto and colleagues complement this approach with a cautionary result: physiological responses to stimulation do not always translate into behavioural changes. They investigated the effects of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation, or taVNS, on response inhibition, in the context of the well-established role of the locus coeruleus-noradrenergic system in regulating cognitive performance. Although stimulation increased levels of salivary alpha-amylase, a marker of noradrenergic activity, no improvement in response inhibition, assessed with a stop-signal task, was observed after stimulation. The authors suggest that noradrenaline modulation via taVNS, at least under the protocol used, may not be sufficient to enhance inhibitory control in simple tasks. Finally, Moezzi and coworkers offer a perspective on visual art therapy, pointing to its potential to reduce stress and anxiety by modulating activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Their review stresses the need to use objective physiological measures, such as heart rate variability and cortisol levels, to validate the efficacy of art-based therapies in treating emotional pain, consistent with previous evidence that even a single art-making session can be associated with reductions in salivary cortisol.
Overall, the editors conclude, these studies show both the promise and the complexity of modulating brain function through new interventions, and suggest that neuromodulation and complementary therapies should be evaluated through behavioural and objective physiological measures together, paving the way toward more effective and personalised clinical applications. The contributions gathered in the collection span the adaptive construction of bodily experience, the identification of neural markers of vulnerability, and novel approaches to modulation, with behavioural, neurophysiological, neuroimaging and computational approaches providing converging tools for addressing questions across basic and translational neuroscience. The editorial, received on 1 October 2026 and accepted on 8 October 2026, is published open access in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience under the Creative Commons Attribution License, and the editors frame the collection as highlighting both the creativity and innovation of the next generation of scientists and an increasingly interdisciplinary field.
Subject of Research: An editorial introducing a Research Topic of studies led by emerging researchers in psychophysiology and cognitive neuroscience.
Article Title: Editorial: Emerging talents in human neuroscience: psychophysiology and cognitive neuroscience 2025
Article References: Bruno, V., D'Angelo, M., Galigani, M., Mello, M., & Risso, G. (2026). Editorial: Emerging talents in human neuroscience: psychophysiology and cognitive neuroscience 2025. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 20, Article 2016840. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2026.2016840
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2026.2016840
Keywords: psychophysiology, cognitive neuroscience, body representation, multisensory integration, EEG biomarkers, neuromodulation, lifespan development, anorexia nervosa, taVNS, art therapy, anaesthesia, hippocampus
News Source: Cassandra Pierce. (October 29, 2026). Emerging Neuroscientists Map Body, Brain and Behaviour Across the Lifespan. Scienmag.
