EBRAINS is pleased to announce that the University of Padua has joined the EBRAINS AISBL as an associate member.

The membership will give the University of Padua the opportunity to co-design future iterations of EBRAINS’ cutting-edge tools and services. These state-of-the-art capabilities – which include an extensive range of brain data sets, a multilevel brain atlas, modelling and simulation tools, and access to high-performance computing resources and robotics and neuromorphic platforms – aim to help European researchers to address major challenges in brain health.

Founded in 1222, the University of Padua (UNIPD) is one of Europe’s oldest and most prestigious seats of learning and has a long tradition and consolidated reputation for scientific excellence. With over 70,000 students (over 7,000 international students) and about 2,200 professors and researchers within its 32 departments, 40 doctoral degree programs, and 44 interdisciplinary research centers, UNIPD covers an exceptionally broad research scope including Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences, Engineering, Physics, Technology, Life Sciences, Medicine, and Natural Sciences.

Supported by 7 Departments, the Padova Neuroscience Center – PNC is an UNIPD research facility with 93 research affiliates among full, associate, and assistant professors, and it hosts the UNIPD PhD Program in Neuroscience. PNC provides scientific and technical expertise in five areas: “Multimodal Neuroimaging and Analysis Methods”, “Circuits and Cellular Neuroscience”, “Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience”, “Translational and Clinical Neuroscience”, and “Computational Neuroscience”. For more information about PNC, please write to administration.pnc@unipd.it or visit https://www.unipd.it/en/.

“We are thrilled to join as an Associate Member the European EBRAINS network. This membership will enable our researchers to actively participate in collaborative teams focused on neuroscience, brain health, and brain-inspired technology. We believe that this partnership will open up new avenues for advancing brain-related research and that the collaborative network of EBRAINS will accelerate our efforts in understanding the brain’s complex dynamic system. We look forward to the opportunities this collaboration will bring.”
Prof. Alessandra Bertoldo
Director of the Padova Neuroscience Center, UNIPD

“This offers a unique opportunity for Padova to become a leading hub for clinical neuroscience within Europe’s leading neuroscience bioinformatics platform, significantly enhancing biomedical research. Additionally, joining the EBRAINS community will allow us to broaden and deepen our international collaborations.”
Prof. Maurizio Corbetta
Founder of the Padova Neuroscience Center, UNIPD

“We are delighted to welcome the University of Padua as an associate member at EBRAINS. The university brings with it a wealth of experience in many branches of brain research, including neuroimaging, cognitive neuroscience, and computational neuroscience.”
Philippe Vernier
Joint-CEO of EBRAINS

About EBRAINS

The EBRAINS research infrastructure, a key outcome and legacy of the EU-funded Human Brain Project (HBP), was officially launched in 2019. Two years later, in 2021, EBRAINS was included in the Roadmap of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). In this next phase, after the recent conclusion of the HBP, EBRAINS will complete the transition into a sustainable infrastructure.

EBRAINS is an open research infrastructure that gathers high-quality research data, tools and computing facilities for brain-related research, built with interoperability at the core. The infrastructure offers an extensive range of FAIR data sets, a most comprehensive multilevel brain atlas, AI-based tools for analysis, modelling and simulation tools, and access to high-performance computing resources, robotics and neuromorphic platforms to researchers.

“Glioblastoma and brain connectivity: the need for a paradigm shift” by Alessandro Salvalaggio, Lorenzo Pini, Alessandra Bertoldo and Maurizio Corbetta has been published on the prestigious journal “The Lancet Neurology”.

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(24)00160-1

The new call for applying for the PhD course in Neuroscience will run from April 9, 2024, to May 13, 2024, 1:00 pm CET.

Il Laboratorio di Neurorobotica del PNC si dota di un nuovo esoscheletro per il progetto Age-It finanziato dal PNRR-PE8 e per il progetto ReBalance finanziato dal PRIN

Prof. Maurizio Corbetta is Corresponding Fellow of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome

Francesco Bettella wins 3 medals at Para Swimming World Championships

The Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) has recently cited prof. Semenza’s work on their monthly newsletter

CDC25/CDK2 pathway triggers phosphorylation-dependent toxicity in SBMA cell, fly and mouse models which can be antagonized by CaN activation. This work links elevated AR phosphorylation to pathogenesis and identify new therapeutic targets for SBMA.

The “Padova Neuroscience Center – PNC” is glad to inform that one of our members, Alessandro Salvalaggio, has been recently awarded a “Poster Award” for the 2022 ANA Annual Meeting in Chicago. Congratulations!

Professore di Neurologia dell’Università di Padova e direttore della Clinica Neurologica dell’Azienda Ospedaliera, è Maurizio Corbetta a ottenere, con un gruppo composto da altri 3 Principal Investigators provenienti dall’Università Statale di Milano e dall’Università Pompeu Fabra e l’ICREA di Barcellona, un finanziamento di quasi 10 milioni di Euro nello schema Synergy Grant

https://www.unipd.it/news/erc-synergy-grant-10-milioni-euro-progetto-nemesis-universit-padova

Carola Dell’Acqua and Elisa Dal Bò – both PhD students at PNC –, Proff. Daniela Palomba and Simone Messerotti Benvenuti – both PNC members –, et al. have recently published a paper about a novel approach for identifying dysfunctional emotional processing in dysphoria.

Fruit of an international collaboration among physicists, neurologists, psychologists and PNC members, a new study proposes the theory of brain criticality to explain brain-behavior relationships in neurological patients.

Annachiara Cagnin, Associated Professor at the Dept. of Neuroscience and member of the PhD teaching board, Diego Cecchin, Associated Professor at the Dept. of Medicine and PNC member, and colleagues have recently published a paper about brain amyloid PET analysis.

The collaboration between a research group from the Department of General Psychology leaded by PNC member Prof. Bisazza and the Department of Biology leaded by Dr. Santacà disclosed the cognitive abilities of newly hatched zebrafish.

Neuroscience PhD Retreat will take place on 20 and 21 May in Asiago, Vicenza: the right moment for PhD students and faculty for sharing their ideas, perspectives and experience. There will be a focus on the goals already achieved, improvement suggestions and the path ahead.

(Italian version only) Article on “Il Mattino di Padova”, April 24th, 2022

(Italian version only) Article on “Il Corriere del Veneto”, April 24th, 2022

(Italian version only) Article on “Padova Oggi”, April 24th, 2022

(Italian version only) Article on “Il Gazzettino”, April 24th, 2022

Carola Dell’Acqua and Elisa Dal Bò, both Doctoral students at PNC working with the psychophysiology lab of the Department of General Psychology, have recently published a longitudinal study aimed at examining whether the predictive role of anxiety on the development of pandemic-related post-traumatic stress symptoms was modulated by individual differences in neural activity during the processing of emotional stimuli.

Link to the article

Find below the calendar of the speeches held by the PNC PhD Students.

Here is the list of all present and planned Lectures and Seminars held or co-hosted at PNC.

Monica Margoni and Umberto Villani, both PhD students of the 34° cycle of the PhD Course in Neuroscience, have recently published the article called “Neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging discloses early changes in the normal-appearing white matter in paediatric multiple sclerosis” on the “Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry”.

Read the full Article

In 2021 The Brain Prize, the world’s largest award for neuroscience, was awarded to
Jes Olesen, Lars Edvinsson, Peter Goadsby and Michael Moskowitz for their work on
the causes and treatment of migraine.
The Brain Prize seminar series on migraine and headache consists of 12 seminars from
international leaders in the field including the 2021 Brain Prize winners.
The series started in April 2021 and it will end in March 2022 and covers topics including
mechanistic studies in patients and animal models, genetics of migraine, cluster- and
post-traumatic headache, and treatment of migraine and headache disorders.

Prof. Daniela Pietrobon, affiliated with the “Padova Neuroscience Center-PNC”, on October 28th, 2021 at 4:00 PM CET will talk about “Migraine – a disorder of E-I balance? Insights from genetic mouse models of the disease”

More info about Prof. Pietrobon’s Seminar

Open to all and free to attend at:
https://www.world-wide.org/Neuro/The-Brain-Prize-Series/

The “Padova Neuroscience Center-PNC” is glad to inform that one of our PhD Students, Arianna Menardi, has been recently awarded for her presentations during a Conference.

Arianna Menardi won a Poster Award with her presentation “Network-targeted TMS stimulation via individualized target selection: a new route toward enhanced reliability”, during the “Transcranial Brain Stimulation in Cognitive Neuroscience Workshop- II Edition” organized by the Center for Mind/Brain Science- CIMeC (https://event.unitn.it/tbs-cnw/).

The “Padova Neuroscience Center-PNC” is glad to inform that two of our PhD Students, Miriam Celli and Tommaso Volpi, have been recently awarded for their presentations during two Conferences.

Miriam Celli won the “SIPF Youth Award” as Best Scientific Contribution with her presentation, called “Resting-State EEG Signatures of Visual Exploration Styles”, during the XVIII Conference of the Società Italiana di Psicofisiologia e Neuroscienze Cognitive

Tommaso Volpi won the “Gamma Prize 2020” for the Best oral proffered talk, with his presentation called: “The negative relationship between brain metabolism and its network dynamics: stability requires more energy”, during the Pet is Wonderful 2020’s Conference.

Each year, Clarivate™ identifies the world’s most influential researchers – the select few who have been most frequently cited by their peers over the last decade. In 2020, fewer than 6,200, or about 0.1%, of the world’s researchers, in 21 research fields and across multiple fields, have earned this exclusive distinction.

See the full list here

Prof. Carlo Semenza has been recently admitted as a member of the prestigious Academia Europaea.

The object of Academia Europaea is the advancement and propagation of excellence in scholarship in the humanities, law, the economic, social, and political sciences, mathematics, medicine, and all branches of natural and technological sciences anywhere in the world for the public benefit and for the advancement of the education of the public of all ages in the aforesaid subjects in Europe.

Academia Europaea is a European, non-governmental association acting as an Academy. Our members are scientists and scholars who collectively aim to promote learning, education and research. Founded in 1988, with about 3800 members which includes leading experts from the physical sciences and technology, biological sciences and medicine, mathematics, the letters and humanities, social and cognitive sciences, economics and the law.

Prof. Maurizio Corbetta’s interview on “Newton” tv magazine.

Along with host Davide Coero Borga and his guests to explore main points of scientific knowledge and find out what research is still investigating. On this episode prof. Maurizio Corbetta talks about the brain.

“What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean.”

Isaac Newton

See the full episode here: https://www.raiplay.it/video/2020/02/Newton-Cervello-una-questione-di-connessioni-a4bf5d00-c203-4e6b-a0f6-fae00be89b13.html

“Brain function relies on circuits of spiking neurons with synapses playing the key role of merging transmission with memory storage and processing. Electronics has made important advances to emulate neurons and synapses and brain-computer interfacing concepts that interlink brain and brain-inspired devices are beginning to materialise. We report on memristive links between brain and silicon spiking neurons that emulate transmission and plasticity properties of real synapses.”

See the full article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58831-9