2023 Research Topics

Action and Intention Understanding

• Beyond action recognition – an RSA approach to elucidate the neural basis of higher-level action interpretation (M. Wurm, F. Pavani)

Cognitive Neurorehabilitation

• Identifying outcome predictors of brain lesions in humans from early functional and anatomical indexes of brain connectivity and plasticity (L. Cattaneo)

Conceptual Representations

• Investigating the neurocognitive underpinnings of navigation in semantic/conceptual spaces (M. Piazza)

• Action recognition and mechanical reasoning - using cross-MVPA to decode the physics of actions and object events (M. Wurm, F. Pavani)

• The neural circuit mechanisms for building spatial and temporal structures (G. Iurilli, R. Bottini)

• Cognitive abilities and their evolution in mini brains (E. Frasnelli) 

Decision Making and Reasoning

• Neurophysiological study on the integration between motivation and abstract rules in motor decisions (L. Cattaneo)

Development

• Neural and Cognitive Basis of Communication and Reference in Infants (E. Parise)

• Language Development, Understanding Words and Forming New Concepts in Infants (E. Parise)

• Intuitive Physics in Infants (E. Parise)

• The environment regulation in the development of brain and behavioural asymmetries in an animal model (E. Frasnelli)
   

Language

• Visually grounded language processing (R. Bernardi)

Learning and Motivation

• Cognitive and neural mechanisms to cope with distraction (M. Turatto)

• How neutral stimuli acquire motivational and attentional salience (M. Turatto)

• Visuomotor mechanisms through which animals learn about the environment they navigate through (E. Frasnelli)

Motor Control and Action Planning

• Studying the cortical motor system in real-world ecological settings (L. Cattaneo)

• Executive control and action inhibition (L. Cattaneo)

• Transforming object features into action affordances – how the brain extracts physical features of tools to infer their function and usage (M. Wurm, F. Pavani)

Neuroethics

• Understanding the lived experiences of Parkinson's disease patients with deep brain stimulation (DBS) (C. Bonfiglioli)

Neuroimaging Methods and Analysis

• An integrated TMS-EEG and MRI approach to explore the interregional brain connectivity (C. Miniussi)

• Brain MRI markers of microstructural and functional plasticity: methodological developments and applications in health and disease (e.g. neurodegeneration, oncology) (J. Jovicich)

• Clustering functional connectivity in autism (A. Gozzi)

Neurostimulation

• Brain stimulation (TMS) techniques in a controlled approach to achieve a novel account of cognitive brain dynamics (C. Miniussi)

• Neuromodulation of functional connectivity in the mouse brain (A. Gozzi)

• TMS as an unbiased brainmapping tool: navigating the cortical and white matter spaces in dense maps (L. Cattaneo)

• Optogenetic modulation of functional connectivity in the mouse brain (A. Gozzi, Y. Bozzi)

Numerical Cognition

• Numerical and magnitude representions in the animal brains (G. Vallortigara)

• Neurobiology of number cognition in zebrafish (G. Vallortigara)

Perception and Attention

• Predictive mechanisms controlling sensory filtering (M. Turatto)

• Establishing a network tracking strategy, a to disclose the principles of communication in the Dorsal Attention Network (C. Miniussi)