Simone Messerotti Benvenuti

Simone Messerotti Benvenuti, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Department of General Psychology, University of Padua.

 

He received his Master’s degree in Experimental Psychology and Cognitive-Behavioural Neuroscience (110/110 cum laude) in 2008 at the University of Padua. He earned a Ph.D. in Psychobiology in 2012 (University of Padua). He spent a period abroad in 2011 as a visiting Ph.D. student at the University of Birmingham, UK.

 

His research relies on an integration of subjective, behavioral and electrophysiological (e.g., EEG/ERPs, heart rate variability, startle reflex) approaches to study the association between depression and cardiovascular diseases as well as the psychophysiological correlates of emotional processing in individuals at risk of mood disorders.

 

He published about 40 peer-reviewed articles in international journals, with an h-index of 13. His research activity received the “Young Investigators Grant for Innovative and Excellent Research” (2014) and the “STARS Starting Grant (STARS-StG)” (2019) by the University of Padua as well as several national and international awards.

 

Main research interests

– Psychosomatic medicine. The role of depression, anxiety, cognitive decline, and autonomic dysregulation in cardiovascular risk.

– Psychophysiology of emotion and mood disorders. The neural, electrophysiological and autonomic correlates of emotion dysregulation in individuals at risk of mood disorders.

– Biofeedback and Neurofeedback. Biofeedback-assisted rehabilitation of autonomic dysfunctions associated with mood disorders; EEG-Neurofeedback for depression, emotion regulation, attention deficits and impulsive symptoms.

Roberta Sellaro

Roberta Sellaro is an Associate Professor at the Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization of the University of Padova.

 

She graduated in Psychology in 2007 at the University of Padova, before moving to the Center for Mind and Brain Sciences (CIMeC) of the University of Trento where, in April 2013, she obtained a PhD in Cognitive and Brain Sciences (Cognitive Neuroscience Programme). During her graduate studies, she investigated whether and to what extent cognitive control efficiency can be affected by the social context surrounding us. Immediately after obtaining her PhD, she joined the Cognitive Psychology Unit of the Leiden University (the Netherlands) and the Leiden Institute for Brain & Cognition (LIBC), where she worked as a postdoctoral fellow, from April 2013 until July 2016, and as an Assistant Professor, from February 2017 until September 2020. During her post-doc, she used food supplementation (tyrosine, tryptophan, probiotics) and non-invasive brain stimulation techniques (tDCS, tVNS) to investigate the role of specific neurotransmitters (such as dopamine, GABA, noradrenaline and serotonin) and brain areas (such as prefrontal cortex areas and temporoparietal junction) in modulating cognitive and social functioning. She later carried out research to identify people’s metacontrol policies (biases towards stability or flexibility) and the factors and the conditions that promote the adoption of either policy. In October 2020, she moved to the University of Padova.

 

Her research interests are very broad. In very general terms, her research is aimed at uncovering reciprocal interactions between bottom-up (and/or self-related) and top-down cognitive control processes. She investigates the role of several factors (e.g., environmental/contextual factors, task-specific features, reward, individual differences, and affect) in modulating cognitive and social functioning and decision-making processes.

 

Her current research aims at integrating behavioral, psychophysiological (e.g., heart rate variability, pupil dilation, eye blink rate), computational and virtual reality methods to modulate cognitive control efficiency and emotional processing both in healthy subjects and in individuals with psychiatric disorders.

 

She has several national and international scientific collaborations, has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed articles in international scientific journals (Scopus h-index 19), 4 book chapters, organized various symposia, workshops and an international conference, and has been invited as a speaker at several symposia, research institutes and public events. She regularly serves as ad-hoc reviewer for several important international journals within the domains of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience and has served as an associate editor for two peer-reviewed international journals.

 

For a list of peer-reviewed international publications, see:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=T8fO5F4AAAAJ&hl=en

Roberto Dell’Acqua

Roberto Dell’Acqua is Full professor of Cognitive Science at the School of Psychology of the University of Padova.

 

Current position

Former Head of the Department of Developmental Psychology (DPSS). Founder of the Neuroimaging Labs sector in his Department. Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Attention & Performance Society, and Editor of major scientific Journals in the field of Cognitive Science and Neuroscience. Principal investigator of the EEG and NIRS Units at the DPSS.

 

Research areas

  • Behavioral investigations of attention limitations in the temporal domain. As a pioneer in the discovery of the attentional blink (AB) phenomenon, several research lines in his labs are still underway to unveil the AB’s EEG and neural correlates.
  • Neuropsychological assessment of attention functions following brain damage. Using the psychological refractory period paradigm, a team of past and present collaborators are seeking to understand the causes of the so-called “mental slowness” affecting patients who suffered traumatic close-head injuries.
  • Cognitive electrophysiology of attention functions in human adults. The EEG/ERP approach is particularly well-suited to capture at the msec level the dynamics underlying an attention shift along the horizontal meridian. This approach, and state-of-the-art analytical approaches, is currently employed in his lab for in-depth explorations of the activity of the fronto-parietal circuit in human adults.
  • Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) of attention functions in human adults. He and his collaborators are presently endeavoring to analyze variations in the concentration of oxy- and de-oxy hemoglobin in the cortical micro-flow so as to map out the regions of the cortical tissue responsible of the striking limitation in the memory maintenance of visually displayed objects.

 

Mendeley: https://www.mendeley.com/profiles/roberto-dellacqua/

Silvia Benavides Varela

Silvia Benavides Varela is Associate Professor at the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology and Department of Neuroscience at Padua University.

 

She is trained as a biotechnology engineer, obtained a PhD in Neuroscience under the mentorship of Jacques Mehler from SISSA, Trieste, Italy. She then worked as a post doctoral researcher at the IRCSS San Camillo Hospital in Venice, and the Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception (CNRS & Université Paris Descartes), in Paris, France.

 

The most important part of her research focused on developing new methods for unveiling the initial state of memory capacities in humans, the environmental factors that modulate learning, and the properties of the brain systems that support language and mathematic achievements across the life-span. She uses a range of neuroimaging techniques including electroencephalography, and functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) in combination with behavioral metrics and analyses, both in healthy and in clinical populations.

Mario Bonato

Mario Bonato is Associate Professor at the Department of General Psychology in Padova.

 

He is a neuropsychologist holding a Master Degree in Experimental Psychology, PhD in Cognitive Science). He has specific clinical expertise in post-stroke cognitive assessment. Among young researchers, dr Bonato is considered a leading expert in the assessment of visuo-spatial disorders. He devised a very sensitive computer-based dual-task method for the diagnosis of hemispatial neglect following unilateral brain damage. This approach mimics everyday demands and might become the gold standard for the diagnosis of hemispatial neglect in the chronic phase (Bonato, 2015).

 

He published mostly as leading author (first and corresponding), several scientific articles, in the most widely read and better-ranked peer-reviewed international journals for neuropsychology and experimental psychology.

 

He attracted more than 300k of research grants by successfully participating in competitive calls at national (Belgium and Italy) and European level. His international profile is very strong and includes 4+ years in Ghent (Belgium). He regularly acts as reviewer for all the best international journals within the domains of experimental psychology, neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience (about 35 journals).

 

Research interests: Visuo-spatial attention, spatial cognition and spatial awareness, particularly in brain-damaged patients (e.g. hemispatial neglect following stroke). Clinical neuropsychology: computer-based diagnosis and rehabilitation. Numerical cognition: number/time-space interactions.

 

Publications: Google Scholar, ResearchGate

Michela Sarlo

Michela Sarlo is an Associate Professor at the University of Urbino.

 

She received a MSc in Psychology (1996) and a PhD in Cognitive Sciences (2002) from the University of Padova.

 

Her primary areas of research and teaching include affective neuroscience and psychophysiology of emotion. Specifically, her current research interests are focused on:

  • the role of emotion in complex decision-making processes: neural and peripheral correlates of cognitive-emotional interaction;
  • the processing of threat stimuli in healthy individuals and in specific phobics: the attentional bias and its cortical, autonomic, and behavioral correlates;
  • the role of REM/NREM sleep on wake emotional processing and cognitive performance: the relationship between EEG activity, autonomic changes and behavior.

Paolo Meneguzzo

Paolo Meneguzzo is a researcher (RTD-B) at the Department of Neuroscience of the University of Padova.

 

He graduated in Medicine and Surgery in 2012 and completed his psychiatry residency in 2018 at the University of Padova. He completed a Ph.D. in neurosciences at the University of Padua in 2021 with a thesis on neurodevelopmental trajectories in patients with anorexia nervosa, investigating the cognitive and structural effects of malnutrition on the brain of adolescents and adult women. During his studies, he spent two internship periods at the Department of Neuroscience and Functional Pharmacology of the University of Uppsala (Sweden) and at the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy of the University of Tübingen (Germany).

 

He participates in numerous national and international research collaborations on psychosis, eating disorders, and body image dissatisfaction. His primary research interests revolve around eating disorders from a clinical neuroscience perspective, with a specific focus on cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal aspects. His research area also includes gender diversity, environmental effects on mental health, and psychotherapies.

 

Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RRcIAAgAAAAJ&hl=it

Giorgia Cona

Giorgia Cona, PhD, is Associate Professor at the University of Padova, Department of General Psychology.

 

She received a Master’s degree in Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Behavioural Neuroscience (110/110 cum laude) in 2008 at the University of Padova. She earned a PhD. in Psychobiology in 2012. She spent a period abroad in 2011 working at the University of Toronto, in the Morris Moscovitch’s Lab.

From 2012 to 2016, she had post-doc positions at the Department of Neuroscience and the Department of General Psychology (University of Padova). In 2017, she become lecturer (RTDa) at the Department of General Psychology.

In 2012, she received the Young Researcher Award from the AIP (Associazione Italiana di Psicologia). In 2019, she won a grant from the University of Padua, the STARS Starting Grant, with a project titled: “Trade-offs in human Behaviour and Brain: a (r)Evolutionary approach” and a grant from the Italian Ministry of Health (Bando Ricerca Finalizzata) with a project focused on the Effectiveness of attention/executive functions training on prospective memory abilities of Parkinson’s disease with a combined immersive Virtual Reality and Telemedicine approach.

 

She teaches Neuropsychology of Aging, Human Electrophysiology and Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation techniques at University of Padua.

 

She has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed articles in international scientific journals, 4 book chapters, organized various symposia and international workshops, and has been invited as a speaker in several national and international conferences and research institutes.

 

She is expert in EEG and TMS techniques; her research interests involve:

  • Neural mechanisms of cognitive processes (i.e., prospective memory, spatial processing, temporal processing; reward-related processes, cognitive control).
  • Commonalities and differences in brain and behavior across individuals
  • Cognitive neuroscience and sport 

 

Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=cT-WHyIAAAAJ&hl=en

Research gate profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Giorgia_Cona

 

Giovanni Mento

Giovanni Mento is Associate Professor in Developmental Neuropsychology and  EEG recording and Analysis at the Department of General Psychology of the University of Padua.

 

He received his master degree in Psychology (2005) and his PhD in Psychobiology (2009) at the University of Padua.  During his PhD, He visited the Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at the INSERM-CEA “Cognitive Neuroimaging unit” CEA/SAC/DSV/DRM/NeuroSpin, Saclay (Paris). He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of General Psychology of the University of Padua (2009-2016).

 

His research interests are in the field of Cognitive Neurosciences, Developmental Cognitive Neurosciences and Developmental Neuropsychology. His main research topic is the investigation of the brain predictive and anticipatory activity in a developmental neuroconstructivist perspective, with a special interest about how top-down and bottom-up temporal expectancy interplay to shape multiple cognitive domains, including attention, motor preparation, working memory and inhibitory control.

 

His scientific interests span over both typical and atypical developmental population, including Down syndrome, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Autism Spectrum Disorder, Learning Disabilities, Neurological Syndromes (i.e., epilepsy).

 

His methodological expertise focuses on the use of both low and high-spatial resolution electroencephalography (Geodesic system) to uncover the spatiotemporal brain dynamics underlying the interaction between predictive mechanisms and stimulus processing. He specifically works on both temporal and oscillatory EEG domains to understand the relationship between resting state/event-related functional connectivity at the source-level and behavioural performance in a developmental perspective.

 

He is the scientific responsible of the research agreement between the Department of General Psychology of the University of Padova and the Scientific institute for rehabilitation medicine association “Eugenio Medea/La Nostra Famiglia”, Conegliano Veneto, Treviso, Italy. Research Project “Analisi dei segnali EEG ad alta densita? e del profilo neuropsicologico per la selezione dei pazienti con epilessia invalidante e farmacoresistente per la chirurgia dell’epilessia”.

 

He has active scientific collaborations with the Department of Experimental Psychology (University of Oxford) and with the King’s College (London).

 

He is member of:

  • Scientific Committee of the Interdepartmental (DPG-DPSS) High-density EEG lab, University of Padova;
  • PhD Course in Psychological Science, University of Padova;
  • Ethical Committee of the of the School of Psychology, University of Padova, Italy.

 

He has co-supervised 3 PhD students, 2 post-doctoral fellow and more than 20 trainees and master students.

 

He has authored more than 33 peer-reviewed articles in international scientific journals, 1 book chapter and has been invited as a speaker in several national and international research institutes.

 

He has served as an ad hoc reviewer for numerous international journals including Plos Biology, Brain, Neurosci Biobehav R, Cereb Cortex, Neuroimage, J Cogn Neurosci, Cortex, Neuropsychologia, Developmental Science, etc.

 

In 2017 he was granted by the University of Padua with the STARS CoG (Supporting Talent in ReSearch@University of Padova) grant, edition 2017, Consolidator Section.

Chiara Spironelli

Chiara Spironelli is Associate Professor at the University of Padua.

 

She received her first-class degree at the University of Padova in 2003 (Summa cum laude), her qualification as State Registered Psychologist in 2005, and her PhD in 2007. From 2007 to 2011, she achieved three Research Grants, and from May 2012 she is Assistant Professor (M-PSI/02) at the Department of General Psychology of University of Padova. At present, she is Associate Professor at the University of Padua.

 

In addition to the main techniques for the psychophysiological research, she is skilled in administration and evaluation of a large number of batteries to assess the cognitive functioning, for the neuropsychological assessment and the evaluation of the main psychiatric syndromes. Within the international framework, she collaborates with the Reichenau Psychiatry Center, (Prof. Dr. B. Rockstroh, Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz), where she spent a research period on the EEG correlates of language during the PhD courses, and with the SANE POWIC Warneford Hospital (Prof. Dr. T.J. Crow, Department of Psychiatry, Oxford, UK), in a project on electrophysiological correlates of hemispheric specialization for language and the main psychiatric syndromes.

 

From 2004 she supervises students in the last phase of experimental diploma preparation and writing (both for first degrees and master degrees), postgraduate students and internship postgraduates for their training and research activities in the Psychophysiology group (Chief: Prof. A. Angrilli). From 2015 she holds the “Psychobiology of Psychotic Disorders” class within the Master Degree in Clinical Psychology, and from 2016 she also holds the “Psychophysiology” class within the Bachelor Degree in Psychological Science (University of Padova).

 

She was ad hoc referee for several neuroscience journals (e.g., Biological Psychology, Cortex, International Journal of Psychophysiology, NeuroImage, Psychological Research, Psychophysiology and Schizophrenia Research). She won the Young Researchers’ Award, year 2006, of the Italian Psychology Association (AIP) – Experimental section – and the AIP Award for the best PhD thesis, year 2007.

 

Main Research Interests

  • Study of the correlation between different levels of auditory hallucinations/delusions and hemispheric dominance for language in paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar and depressive patients using electrophysiological measures (evoked potential and EEG band analyses);
  • Study of the (normal and pathological) modulation of attention and spatial awareness by concurrent task demands by means of electrophysiological correlates;
  • Study of body posture effects on EEG cognitive functioning in healthy participants and neurological patients;
  • A new approach for contrasting cognitive decline in elderly: measuring cortical reorganization after working memory training with behavioral and electrophysiological (evoked potential and EEG band) indices (Progetto di Ateneo CPDA152872);
  • Study of cortical plasticity mechanisms in aphasic patients before and after the functional recovery using electrophysiological measures (evoked potential and EEG band analyses).

 

Angela Favaro

Angela Favaro is Full professor MED/25  (Psychiatry), Padova University School of Medicine. She is also Chief of Psychiatric Clinic at the Hospital of Padova; Chief of the Eating Disorders Unit at the Hospital of Padova; Director of Psychiatry Residency Program.

 

Major Research Interests

– Psychopathology, epidemiology and therapy of eating disorders

– Genetic and neurodevelopmental risk factors for the development of eating disorders. The Eating Disorders Padova Research Group in collaboration with Professor Maurizio Clementi (Clinical Genetics Unit) host a DNA biobank (BIOVEDA)

– Neurocognition in eating disorders and in other types of psychiatric disorders. Functional connectivity correlates of executive functioning in psychiatric disorders.

– Structural and functional neuroimaging in eating disorders, psychiatric disorders, and rare genetic diseases

– Neuroconnectomics of psychiatric disorders.

– Non-invasive repetitive stimulation as a treatment in psychiatric disorders

Antonino Vallesi

Antonino Vallesi is Full Professor in Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience.

 

He pursued his master degree in Psychology (cum laude) from University of Padua in 2003 and his PhD in Neuroscience (cum laude) at SISSA, Trieste in 2007.  During his PhD, he visited the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL, London (2005). He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, Toronto (2007-2009) and an Assistant Professor at SISSA (2009-2012), and then at University of Padua (2012-2014), where he was then promoted as Associate Professor (2014-2022) and is currently full professor in Psychobiology and Physiological Psychology.

 

In 2011 he received the Bertelson Award from the European Society of Cognitive Psychology, and the “Outstanding Young Person” national award for his research activity from Junior Chamber International-Italy. In 2017, he was the recipient of the SIPF Prize from the Società Italiana di Psicofisiologia e Neuroscienze Cognitive. In 2013 he was funded with an FP7 ERC starting grant with a project on Life Experience Modulation of Executive Function Asymmetries (about 1.5 MEuros; GA #313692).

 

His research interests include the anatomo-functional organization of executive functions, cognitive aging and temporal processing. The methods he uses include neuroimaging, EEG, neuropsychology, neuromodulation and experimental psychology.

 

Prof. Vallesi has supervised over 10 PhD students, 13 postdoctoral fellows, and more than 65 undergraduate, master’s, and trainee students.

 

He has authored approximately 145 peer-reviewed articles in international scientific journals, contributed to 7 book chapters, co-edited one book, and organized various symposia and both national and international conferences. He has also been invited to speak at numerous conferences and research institutes around the world.

 

At the University of Padua, prof. Vallesi has taught courses in Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuroimaging and Brain Stimulation, Foundations of Psychology, and Methodology for the Behavioral Sciences.

 

He is currently Specialty Chief Editor for Frontiers in Psychology: Cognition, and has served as Associate Editor, Guest Editor, Academic board member of various international journals. He has served as an ad hoc reviewer for numerous international journals including Plos Biology, Brain, Neurosci Biobehav R, Cereb Cortex, Neurobiol Aging, Neuroimage, Hum Brain Mapp, J Cogn Neurosci, Cortex, Neuropsychologia etc.

 

Prof. Vallesi has been a grant reviewer for Horizon 2020 MSCA-IF-2016 & FET 2014; MIUR SIR 2014; FP7 HBP Call 2013; NSERC Canada 2011-12; Romanian NCDI 2011-13; OPUS-National Science Centre, Poland etc.

 

If interested in our research, have a look at the Executive Function Lab at Unipd

Antonio Maffei

Antonio Maffei is an Assistant Professor (RTD-a) at the Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization (DPSS) of the University of Padova.

 

He obtained his Master’s Degree in Neuroscience and Neuropsychological Rehabilitation in 2014, and his PhD in Psychological Sciences in 2019 from the University of Padova (Supervisor: Prof. Alessandro Angrilli).

 

He held positions as a junior and senior postdoctoral fellow at the Department of General Psychology (Supervisor: Prof. Alessandro Angrilli), Padova Neuroscience Center, and Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization (Supervisor: Prof. Paola Sessa) of the University of Padova. Furthermore, he has been a visiting researcher at the University of Würzburg (Germany) and the Babes-Bolyai University (Romania).

 

His research interests are focused on understanding the psychobiological correlates of emotional behavior in healthy and subclinical populations, taking advantage of a wide range of electrophysiological techniques for measuring activity in the central (EEG/MEG) and peripheral nervous system (ECG, EMG, GSR). Furthermore, he is interested in devising ecological experimental approaches for experimental emotional induction.

 

Active research lines cover the following topics:

  • Characterizing how social support, social relationships, and social isolation shape stress reactivity, with a focus on the cardiovascular component of the stress response
  • Characterizing the psychophysiological implications of emotional contagion of stress
  • Developing new statistical tools for assessing interindividual synchronization in brain and peripheral nervous system activity during ecological emotional induction

 

Scopus: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=57103014500

Scholar: https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=9Tr6JR4AAAAJ&hl=it

 

Arianna Menardi

Arianna Menardi works as a Researcher (RTD-A) at the Department of Neuroscience, University of Padova.

 

During her career, she collaborated with several national and international research groups. In 2017, she joined the Berenson-Allen Center for Non-invasive Brain Stimulation at Harvard Medical School, where she worked under the Supervision of Prof. Alvaro Pascual-Leone and Dr. Emiliano Santarnecchi in studying cortical excitability (as assessed by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation-TMS) in Alzheimer’s Disease patients. In 2018 she joined the Brain Investigation and Neuromodulation Lab in Siena, where she worked on network-targeted interventions by means of multi-electrodes transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) during concomitant functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), under the supervision of Prof. Simone Rossi and Dr. Emiliano Santarnecchi. In 2019 she started her PhD at the Padova Neuroscience Center, under the supervision of Prof. Antonino Vallesi, Prof. Maurizio Corbetta and Dr. Emiliano Santarnecchi. Her PhD project focused on the study of interindividual differences in the brain topographical properties for the selection of personalized stimulation targets in the brain. Collaborators to this project included Prof. Marie Banich and Prof. Naomi Friedman for the University of Colorado Boulder, Prof. Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and Dr. Emma Towlson from the Notheastern University, in Boston.

 

More recently, Arianna won a Grant for Young Researchers by the Italian Association for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease to investigate individual alterations in the functional connectivity as a potential early biomarker of pathology progression.