Tuesday, 21 January 2020 | 12:00 noon
Associate Professor of Psychobiology and Physiological Psychology, University of Parma, Dept of Medicine and Surgery, Parma, ITALY
The human brain in the mirror: motor and social neurophysiology in non-human primates
(Host: E. Buratti)
In the last three decades, the cortical motor system of primates has been subject to increasing scientific interest for its crucial role not only in planning and organizing movement, but also in perceptual and socio-cognitive functions, such as goal coding, action selection, representation of the surrounding space and of others’ observed actions. Most of these discoveries have been made possible thanks to the application of neurophysiological techniques in awake behaving monkeys, which constitute the best and still unreplaceable model for studying human brain functioning at the single neuron and circuit level. Recent technological progresses and new computational approaches are making possible to leverage these discoveries for several different purposes, from a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying brain functioning in healthy individuals and in different populations of patients, to the decoding of intentional motor plans for neuroprosthetics applications and rehabilitative purposes.