The interest in understanding the origins of criminal behaviour goes far back in time, to the controversial theories of Franz Josef Gall and Cesare Lombroso. Since then, some improvements and discoveries were achieved, and nowadays the body of research in forensic psychiatry has grown substantially, specially thanks to the contributions of neuroscience. In fact, despite the radical view that both Gall and Lombroso had, they got the right intuition, confirmed by recent research: the predisposition to offend (or to act in a certain way) can be associated with genetic, hormonal and neurobiological factors.

For this reason neuroscience has become the tool to investigate the source of such offending behaviour, trying to understand its motives and causes.The broader scope of Forensic Neuroscience is then to investigate the brain functioning of offenders or, more generally, the neural basis and the mechanisms that lead to break norms (social or moral) and to behave differently from the majority of people. 

Therefore, our research line in Forensic Neuroscience and Psychiatry aims to shed new light on the biological and genetic underpinnings of human behaviour. To reach our goal, we combine behavioural, genetic, physiological, computational and imaging tools, investigating the roots of aggression, pro-sociality and personality disorders.

ONGOING PROJECTS

• The Genetic Basis of Pro- and Anti-social Behaviour 

• Functional Frontal Fragility and Social Behaviour

• Machine Learning Techniques and Malingering (Univerità di Padova) 

• Personality Disorders , Psychopathy and Social Cognition

• Neurocomputational Mechanisms of Psychiatric traits

• Decision Making in Forensic Settings

• Large Language Models and Verbal Lie Detection

• Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale -  Prof. Giuseppe Sartori and Cristina Scarpazza - Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy

• Dipartimento di Medicina Clinica e Sperimentale - Prof.ssa Silvia Pellegrini and collaborators - Università di Pisa, Italy 

• AXES Research Unit - Behavioral Economic group - Prof. Ennio Bilancini and collaborators - IMT Scuola Alti Studi Lucca, Italy 

• MoMiLab Research Unit - SPACE group - Prof. Giulio Bernardi and collaborators - IMT Scuola Alti Studi Lucca, Italy 

Riccardo Loconte- “Large Language Models per la rilevazione della menzogna”. V Convegno Nazionale di Psicologia Giuridica, Milano, 12-14/05/2023 

Riccardo Loconte, “Are humans bad evaluators or poor decision-makers? A human vs machine experiment”, AIP – Sezione Clinico Dinamica, University of Florence, 18-20/09/2023

Riccardo Loconte, “Fine-tuning Large Language Models for verbal lie detection”, AIP – Sezione Sperimentale, IMT School of Advanced Studies Lucca, 18-20/09/2023

Matteo Pirisi, Simona Casale, Clara Gangemi, “The Nature and Methods of Psychiatric Evaluation in Italian Criminal Trials”. 9th Conference of the Italian Society for Neuroethics (SINe), IMT School of Advanced Studies Lucca, 10-12/05/2023

Simona Casale, “Combining Forensic Psychology and AI to Standardize Forensic Evaluations”, AIP – Sezione Sperimentale, IMT School of Advanced Studies Lucca, 20/09/2023