His scientific activities in the last years were dedicated, among the others, to the use of magnetoencephalography (MEG) and high-density electroencephalography (High-Density EEG), especially in the in the context of clinical research.

His research interests mainly include:

• Cognitive Neuroscience with a focus on neuroscience of language and communication;
• Neurophsysiology with a focus on neurophysiological correlates of predictive processing and on biomarkers of stroke recovery;
• Psychometrics with a focus on the development of new neuropsychological tests and on methodological improvements in clinical neuropsychology;
• Statistical analysis with the application of advanced analytical methods (Mixed models, Generalized Additive Models, Machine Learning, etc.);
• Open Science with a focus on sharing knowledge, sharing data, and reproducibility of analysis code.

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He is a biomedical engineering by training and holds a PhD in PET kinetic modelling. His main research interest is related to the development and validation of molecular neuroimaging biomarkers and to their use for drug development and precision medicine. With over 15 years of experience and 200+ peer-reviewed publications in analysing high-dimensional brain imaging data and large observational cohorts, his work focuses on transforming complex information into robust and clinically meaningful indicators.

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Mariagrazia Ranzini’s scientific research focuses primarily on the field of cognitive psychology. Her main research area is numerical cognition, specifically investigating how attention, memory and action processes contribute to the mental representation and processing of numerical, spatial and temporal quantities. She also studies synesthesia, embodied cognition, attention deficits and calculation deficits. She conducts her research using behavioural investigation methods, such as analysing accuracy, reaction times and eye movements, as well as the effects of prismatic adaptation and optokinetic stimulation, and hand kinematics. She also employs neuroimaging techniques (EEG, MEG, fNIRS): in particular, she has recently initiated a series of studies on the neural correlates common to quantity processing and manual actions (e.g. pointing, grasping objects) using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).

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Her research interests are focused on both advancing the applicability of diffuse optical techniques in both infant and adult populations and applying these techniques to study both pathological and healthy brain processes. She is interested in easing the use of fNIRS for all users, providing guidelines and tools, such as Array Designer, which could help users to objectively design their probe layout. She is also interested in applying fNIRS/DOT techniques to study cognitive processes in the healthy population, aiming to study cognitive functions in ecological settings. Her current research interests aim at evaluating the impact of glycemic variability and tight glycemic control on brain hemodynamics in the very preterm population and their impact on neurodevelopmental outcome, combining optical techniques, EEG and clinical and behavioral measures.

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His training in biological research started with a master’s degree in molecular biology at University of Pisa (2006), where he also received an Honors degree in Biology after completing the graduate course at Scuola Normale Superiore. Then, he received his PhD Neuroscience, still from Scuola Normale Superiore (2010), after working under the supervision of prof.s Lamberto Maffei, Matteo Caleo, and Tommaso Pizzorusso on the effect of environmental stimuli on synaptic plasticity, using in vivo electrophysiology, imaging, and biochemistry. He then continued to explore these topics with a postdoc at the Neuroscience Institute of the National Research Council. In 2014, he moved to the Physiology Institute of Catholic University in Rome with an assistant professor position. While getting proficient in patch-clamp electrophysiology and coimmunoprecipitation techniques, he contributed to elucidate the effect of metabolic stressors, such as a hyperlipidic diet, in curbing synaptic plasticity. In 2017, Marco moved back to Scuola Normale Superiore, where he became assistant professor in Antonino Cattaneo’s lab, where he was introduced to the design and validation of genetically encoded tools for synapse labeling and analysis, which he used to create maps of in vivo synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus, as well as to analyze the variations in the molecular composition of synapses in response to learning. In 2019, Marco obtained his first independent position as a researcher of the Neuroscience Institute of the National Research Council, where he was promoted senior investigator before moving to University of Padua in 2023.

Marco’s current research interests are focused on understanding how synapses are affected by physiological variations in sensory inputs as well as by pathological states, including Alzheimer’s disease and neuroinflammation. To answer his scientific questions, he employs a combination of genetically encoded reporters and probes, behavioral testing, electrophysiology, imaging, and biochemistry in preclinical models. His research is supported by grants from the Ministry of University and Research, as well as from private charities, such as AirAlzh (Italian Association for Research on Alzheimer’s).

Marco’s ultimate goal as a researcher is to make contributions which can be truly useful to ameliorating the condition of diseased people, by exploiting basic research to indicate new potential targets for the therapy of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases.

Scopus link: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=26424686300
Google Scholar link: https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=hkEBXloAAAAJ&hl=it

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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.

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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

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He graduated in Physics in 2008 at the University of Padova, and later earned a doctorate in Environmental Engineering at the Ecole École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in 2011. After a visiting period as a researcher at the University of Princeton (NJ, USA ), since 2012 he works in the Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Physics , where in 2016 he earned the position of Assistant Professor (RTDb). At present, he is Associate Professor.

His research work is at the interface between hydrology, ecology, and biology in the context of a theoretical framework provided by the physics of complex systems. His approach to these topics includes data mining, data analysis, statistical analysis, computational and analytic modeling.

He is author of numerous scientific publications in internationally renowned journals such as Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Nature Communications.

From 2013 he teaches at the Master in Communication Sciences at the University of Padova.

For more info: @SamirSuweis or visit http://loop.frontiersin.org/people/294830/overview

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Current Position

Head of functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Laboratory, Department of Developmental Psychology.

Major research interests

Use of functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

Behavioral and neuroimaging investigation of:

• cognitive control
• visual short-term memory
• numerical cognition

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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.

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