Upcoming Seminar
Towards an evidence-based assessment of social cognition
Social cognition is a multifaceted complex domain resulting from different cognitive sub-functions involved in interpreting information acquired from the social environment and in modulating the way of thinking and acting according to social situations. The processing of social signals, and the subsequent adaptation of behavioural responses, relies on the activation of complex networks involving frontal and temporo-limbic regions that can be significantly affected in neurodegenerative diseases such as the frontotemporal dementia. Cognitive tests represent gateway markers in the diagnostic framework of dementia, thus the objective quantification of socio-affective deficits with ad hoc developed social cognition tasks represents a critical component in clinical and research settings. In this talk I address the issue of the development of evidence-based neuropsychological tests for the assessment of social cognitive abilities, that will be discussed through empirical studies and clinical cases.
Latest Seminar
Thomas Andrillon
Monash University
21/10/20 @ 11:30am
New analytical approaches to PSG recordings, combining big-data and machine learning tools to investigate sleep
Polysomnographic (PSG) recordings are the gold-standard of sleep research in humans. Yet, PSG recordings are not always analysed to their full potential. This is particularly striking in the case of insomnia, a disorder for which PSG recordings are not necessary to establish a diagnosis. I will show here how PSG recordings carry very rich and reliable information about one's sleep, in particular in the case of insomnia. In fact, the paradox of SSM (presence of subjective symptoms of insomnia without objective impairments of sleep) is apparent only when focusing on superficial, large-scale metrics of sleep but dissolves when examining the finer dynamics of brain activity. The limitations outlined in the past and leading to the exclusion of PSG recordings from the diagnosis of insomnia are no longer warranted and clinicians should revisit the benefits of PSG recordings. This reassessment is timely in the light of two ongoing revolutions in the field of Sleep Medicine: (1) the emergence of consumer-based PSG devices will bring PSG recordings to the masses, (2) the translation of computational tools from the field of Artificial Intelligence to Sleep Medicine allows the rapid, automated and massive analysis of large datasets. I will illustrate the advantages of these new methods in the field of Sleep Research by showing how we can even move beyond the current classification of sleep stages using unsupervised clustering.
Visiting Professors
Susan Bookheimer
Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCLA
Clinical neuropsychologist with a broad interest in the study of human cognition in relation to brain structure, function, and pathology. Her experimental expertise includes structural and functional MRI and intraoperative electrocortical stimulation mapping, as well as classical neuropsychological approaches.
Jack Van Horn
Professor of Psychology and Data Science at University of Virginia
Author, researcher, lecturer on the human brain, its structure and function, and the role of information technology in sharing data for use in understanding fundamental neurological processes in health and disease.
Andrea Mechelli
King’s College London
After completing his studies in psychology at the University of Padua (1999), he carried out a PhD in neuroscience at University College London (2002). In 2004, he joined the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London, where is Professor of Early Intervention in Mental Health. His research Interests: Integration of machine learning and neuroimaging to develop diagnostic and prognostic models of psychosis; Development and validation of novel clinical tools for improving detection and treatment of psychosis; Use of smartphone technologies to investigate the impact of the built and social environment on mental health in real time (see urbanmind.info).
Corrado Sinigaglia
Università degli Studi di Milano
Professor of Philosophy of Science at University of Milan since 2001. Before that he studied at the Husserl-Archives of Leuven (1992-1993), at the Ecole Normale Superiéure of Paris (1994), and at the University of Genova (1995-1999), where he obtained my PhD in Philosophy of Science. Fields of research: Cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind. He is currently working on the role of motor processes and representations in joint action.
Past Visiting Professors
Russ Poldrack
Stanford University
Professor of Psychology and director of the Stanford Center for Reproducible Neuroscience. His research uses brain imaging to understand how we learn and make decisions and how we exert self-control. Some projects he developed include the Cognitive Atlas (htttp://www.cognitiveatlas.org) and OpenfMRI (http://www.openfmri.org).
Leah Krubitzer
University of California, Davis
American neuroscientist, Professor of Psychology and head of the Laboratory of Evolutionary Neurobiology. Her research interests center on how complex brains in mammals (e.g., humans) evolve from simpler forms.
Past Seminars
Pieter Roelfsma
Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience
James Haxby
Dartmouth College
Jody Culham
Western University
Hans Op de Beeck
Leueven University
Michael Hanke
Forschungszentrum Jülich
Maria Ida Gobbini
Dartmouth College
Takao Hensch
Harvard University
Michela Fagiolini
Boston Children's Hospital
Events
October 21-23, 2018
MidTerm Conference - May 21-23, 2018
Summer School “AFNI and SUMA Bootcamp” – June 3-7, 2019
H2020 EU-project SoftPro
Review meeting – May 22-24, 2019
Review meeting – May 22-24, 2019
