Associate Professor

Education

1996 - Degree in Physics, University of Rome La Sapienza
1998-2001 – PhD in Neurosciences, University of Rome Tor Vergata
2012-2016 - Specialization in Medical Physics, University of Rome Cattolica

Positions

2001-2006 – Researcher at Fondazione Santa Lucia, IRCCS, Rome
2006 – 2008 – Marie Curie Fellow (EC FP6), University of Cambridge, UK
2008 – present - Researcher at Fondazione Santa Lucia, IRCCS, Rome and University of Rome Tor Vergata
2018-2020 Researcher (RTDb) at University of Rome Unicamillus
2020 - 2024 Associate Professor of Physiology, University of Messina.
2024 - present Associate Professor of Physiology, University of Rome, Tor Vergata.

My research centers on the study of brain mechanism of perception and cognition through functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Main topics of my research cover visual-vestibular perception and encoding of motion in the gravitational field, from object motion, to self-motion, to neural coding of navigation in the three dimensional space.
For these studies I developed fMRI protocols of visual stimulation (space-motion stimuli as rollercoaster simulation) and vestibular stimulation (caloric, sound-evoked) and applied classical univariate methods of analyses as well as advanced connectivity techniques, multivariate pattern
analyses and structural connectivity techniques. I also studied alteration of these mechanisms in chronic vestibular patients and the interaction between vestibular pathologic conditions and anxiety.Other fields of interest include the mechanisms of attention and anxiety.