Language and Memory (13)

Alessandro Angrilli

Master degree in Biology. PhD in Experimental Psychology with a thesis entitled “Psychophysiology of emotions”. In 1995 spent one year in the Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology of Tübingen directed by Prof. Niels Birbaumer. In 1997-1998, Marie-Curie post-doc grant at the University of Konstanz, laboratories of Prof. Thomas Elbert and Brigitte Rockstroh with a project on cortical plasticity of language in aphasic patients after recovery. In 1998, Assistant Professor of Psychobiology at the Department of General Psychology, University of Padova. In 2001, Associate professor and in 2015, Full professor of Psychobiology. He has been supervisor and tutor of several PhD students, for three of whom he was co-tutor with German Universities (Konstanz and Wuerzburg).

Alessandro Martini

Present position

Alessandro Martini is Full professor of Otorhinolaryngology, Padova University School of Medicine; previous Chief of ENT and  of Padova Hospital Neurosciences and Sense Organs Department; previous Director Universitary Neurocience Dept. and Bioacoustic Laboratory, University of Padova.

Major Research Interests

  • Genetic causes of deafness and on malformation pathology of ear, cochlear implants and implantable prothesis. Principal Investigator in many Italian and European research projects  (HEAR, GenDeaf, RegenEar).
  • In the Laboratory of Bioacoustics is carried out a research on molecular and in vitro cellular on neuronaland resulting organ of Corti cell lines, in order to analyze the causes of hearing disorders and correlated therapies.

Carlo Semenza

Graduated in Medicine, 17-7-1974, Diploma in Psychiatry, 26-7-1978 , University  of Padova.

Present Position: Full Professor, University  of Padova (2008-).

Full Professor of Neuropsychology University of Trieste, Italy (1995-2008).
Head of the Dept. of Psychology University of Trieste (1997-2000);
Head of Clinical Psychology School Trieste (1997-2000-2002);
Associate Professor University of Padova (1980-1995).

Research Fellow, Boston VA Hospital, 1977-1978, 1981, 1983;

Visiting Professor/Teaching: University  of Melbourne (1988), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1991), Boston University, (1991), Victoria University (1997), University of Athens, 2010, 2012, 2013, Basque Center for Cognition, Brain and Language, San Sebastian (2013).

Founder-organiser European Workshop on Cognitive Neuropsychology, Bressanone, Italy, 1983-present.

Chiara Spironelli

She receives 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 achieves three Research Grants, and from May 2012 she is Assistant Professor (M-PSI/02) at the Department of General Psychology of University of Padova. 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.

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 Assistant Professor (RTDb).

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.

Judit Gervain

Judit Gervain is a Full Professor at the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology. She is trained as a theoretical linguistic, obtained a PhD in 2002 in Cognitive Neuroscience under the mentorship of Jacques Mehler from SISSA, Trieste, Italy. She then worked as a post doctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. In 2009, she took up a researcher position at the CNRS, in Paris, France, from which she moved to the University of Padua in 2020.

Her research focuses early speech perception and language acquisition in typically developing monolingual, bilingual infants as well as in infants with hearing difficulties.

Marco Zorzi

Marco Zorzi is Full Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Psychology at the University of Padova, and Senior Researcher at IRCCS San Camillo Neurorehabilitation Hospital in Venice-Lido.

Trained in cognitive psychology, computational modelling, computational and cognitive neuroscience during doctoral and postdoctoral studies in Trieste (University of Trieste and SISSA), London (UCL) and Padova, he joined San Raffaele University-Milan in 2000 as assistant professor and the University of Padova in 2001 as associate professor (full professor since 2006).

In 2001 he set up the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, an interdisciplinary research laboratory at the frontiers between cognitive science, computer science and neuroscience, focused on the computational bases of human cognition. 

Nicola Cellini

Nicola Cellini is Assistant Professor (RtD-A) at the Department of General Psychology of the University of Padova. He authored about 50 papers in international journals on sleep psychophysiology. His main research interests are the beneficial role of sleep in cognitive functions in healthy and clinical populations and the validation of wearable devices for physiological assessment in ecological conditions. He recently started to work on the development and use of non-invasive techniques to stimulate the sleeping brain to improve memory consolidation and sleep quality in humans.
He has a network of national and international collaborators including researchers from Stanford Research International and University of California Irvine.

Ramón Guevara

Ramón Guevara is a biophysicist and neuroscientist. He studied physics, earning an M.Sc in theoretical condense matter physics at the University of Havana, and an M.Sc in high energy physics at the Abdus Salam International Center of Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy. He defended his Ph.D thesis at the University of Trieste, Italy, in 2003, in the field of theoretical particle physics and cosmology, after which he worked at several universities, research institutes and hospitals in Italy, Spain, France and Canada. He is currently a Research Technologist at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Padua, Italy.

His main research interest is the temporal coordination dynamics in the nervous system, and the investigation of the mechanisms and functional role of neuronal oscillations and synchronization in cognition and brain pathologies.

Silvia Benavides Varela

Silvia Benavides Varela is an Assistant Professor affiliated to 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.

Simone Gastaldon

Simone Gastaldon is currently a Post-doctoral Research Fellow (assegnista di ricerca) at the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology (DPSS).

He obtained a master’s degree in Linguistics (2015) and a PhD in Psychological Sciences (2021) from the University of Padova. His PhD work, under the supervision of Francesca Peressotti, focused on predictive processing during speech comprehension and the possible links with speech production, by employing electroencephalography (time-frequency and event-related potential analyses) in typically developed adults and adults with a speech-motor impairment (i.e., developmental stuttering). Currently, his research is focused on predictive language processing in audiovisual speech comprehension and in deaf people with cochlear implant.