Attention and Perception (20)

Antonino Vallesi

Antonino Vallesi is a cognitive neuroscientist. 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.

Aram Megighian

1988 MD degree (University of Padua)
1992 Residency in Neurology (University of Padua)
1996-1997 Research Scientist Dep of Biology (San Diego State University, USA)
1992-2010 Assistant Professor in Physiology
1997- Adjunct Professor Dep of Biology (San Diego State University, USA)
2010- Associate Professor in Physiology (DBS, University of Padua)

Research interest

Nervous system function is dedicated to translate, generate and process informations in a binary code based on neuronal electrical response: action potential.
These binary coded informations are exchanged from one neuron to the other connected by synapses in both simple and complex circuits. Eventually these informations are processed generating behavior, i.e.

Claudia Lodovichi

Claudia Lodovichi graduated in Medicine (1995) at the University of Pisa Medical School and Sant’ Anna School of Advanced Studies Pisa, Italy, with honors. She then obtained a PhD in Neurobiology (1999) at Sant’ Anna School of Advanced Studies Pisa, Italy, with honors, working on the interplay between neurotrophins and neuronal activity on cortical visual plasticity . She then moved to the USA where she worked as post doc, in LC Katz’s laboratory, HHMI, Duke Neurobiology Durham NC (1999- 2003) and then in JA Gogos’ laboratory, Columbia University NY, NY (2003 – 2005), where she continued to study circuit formation, function and plasticity, mostly in the olfactory system.

Eloisa Valenza

Present position

Full professor in Developmental Cognitive Psychology (M-PSI/04), Padova University School of Psychology

She is author of 67 scientific contributions among articles published on peer-reviewed international (30) and national (21), academic book chapters (14) and monographs (2). Scopus citation: 996, Scopus h-index: 14.

Major research interest

Her research interests focus on cognitive development in infancy, with specific reference to the early effect of attentional, perceptual and postural abilities on high level cognition (e.g., language acquisition). A clear understanding of early cognitive abilities and motor functioning is critical for identifying precocious predictors of atypical development that originate in infancy but continue throughout childhood.

Ettore Ambrosini

Ettore Ambrosini graduated in Psychology in 2009 at the University “G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti and earned a PhD in Neuroimaging in 2013 at the same University. After a post-doctoral position at the University of Chieti (2013), he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Neuroscience, University of Padova, where (from 2017) he currently holds the position of Associate Professor.

His research interests include the understanding of the organization and the neural underpinnings of executive functions, the perception of objects and their semantic representation, and the perception and anticipation of others’ goal-directed actions. To study these topics, he uses different techniques such as psychophysics, eye tracking, brain stimulation (TMS), and neurophysiology (EEG).

Francesca Peressotti

Position

Francesca Peressotti, PhD is Full Professor (M-PSI/01) at the Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, where she is a member of the CoLab.

Research Interests

FP’s research is at the intersection of several domains of Cognitive Science and Neuroscience, including visual perception, orthographic, phonological and semantic processing. It is aimed at investigating the functional architecture of the language system and it is primarily based on data coming from behavioral and electrophysiological measures, comparing the performance of different individuals, such as, e.g., adults, children, bilinguals, deaf people speaking of the Italian Sign Language. In a general sense, the approach used is to look at the language system taking into account experimental data coming from different domains focusing on the interactions between the language system and other cognitive functions, such as spatial attention, visual short memory, executive functions.

Giorgia Cona

Giorgia Cona, PhD, is an assistant professor (Ricercatore di Tipo B) 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.

Giovanni Mento

Giovanni Mento is Research Assistant Professor (RTD-B) 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.

Luca Tonin

Luca Tonin received the Ph.D. degree in robotics from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, in 2013. He then pursued three years of postdoctoral research at the Intelligent Autonomous System laboratory, the University of Padova, Italy. Since 2016, he has been senior postdoctoral researcher at EPFL. He is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova. 

His research is strongly characterized by a commitment to the brain-machine interface (BMI) field and the intertwined neuroscientific and engineering aspects. He dedicated the past decade to explore new solutions for advanced interactions between user, BMI and external devices.

Marco Dal Maschio

Present position
Associate Professor of Physiology, Department of Biomedical Science, University of Padua.

Bio sketch
Marco Dal Maschio obtained the degree in Physics at the University of Padova in 2002. After completing a PhD in Biotechnologies, he undertook postdoctoral research first at the Italian Institute of Technology, Dept. Neuroscience and Brain Technologies, (Genua, Italy), and then at the Max-Planck Institute for Neurobiology, Dept. Genes-Circuits-Behavior (Martinsried, Germany).

Research Interests
Is it possible to link neuronal activity to functional architectures supporting behavior? A growing toolbox of experimental and analysis methods allows to start addressing these questions in awake or even freely behaving animal models.