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Projects

Cognitive Psychology of Music

  • Perception of timbre
  • Psychology of rhythm
  • Interactions between melody and rhythm
  • Structuring factors for long term memory for musical excerpts

Crossmodal Interactions

  • Audio-visual semantic interactions in environmental event recognition
  • Art and cross-modality
  • Cross-modal attention:
    In everyday life, the adaptive control of behaviour requires the integration and coordination of information originating from different input modalities. When trying to follow a conversation in a noisy environment with distracting sounds, attending to relevant lip movements may be as important as attending to the speaker’s voice coming from the same location. This fact have important implications for mechanisms of attentional selectivity, which could involve spatial synergies (crossmodal links) in the attentional processing of information across sensory modalities. Until recently, most experimental investigations of spatial attention have focused on spatially selective processing within single sensory modalities. Thus, the questions of whether there are crossmodal links in spatial attention between vision, audition, and touch; which mechanisms are involved in such links; and how these links affect the processing of information at attended and unattended locations have only now begun to be addressed systematically.
    • Olivetti Belardinelli, M. & Santangelo, V. (2005). The head-centered meridian effect: auditory attention orienting in conditions of impaired visual spatial information. Disability and Rehabilitation, 27: 761-768.
    • Santangelo, V., Van der Lubbe, R.H.J., Olivetti Belardinelli, M., & Postma, A. (in press). Spatial attention triggered by unimodal, crossmodal and bimodal exogenous cues: a comparison on reflexive orienting mechanisms. Experimental Brain Research.
    • Olivetti Belardinelli, M., & Santangelo, V., & Botta, F. (submitted). Structural and Functional Interference Between Endogenous Orienting Mechanisms.
    • Santangelo, V., Van der Lubbe, R.H.J., Olivetti Belardinelli, M., & Postma, A. (in preparation). On the influence of multimodal integration on exogenous orienting: an ERP study.
  • Audio-Visuo-Motor integration:
    In agreement with recent data that show the existence of tri-modal (audio-visuo-motor) neurons in the prefrontal cortex (Kohler et al., 2002) multimodal integration mechanisms between auditory, visual, and motor processing appeared to be a crucial aspect of today’s neuro-cognition research. Relevant issues treated by our Lab are: a) the recognition of environmental unimodal/multimodal sounds, b) the time course, or temporal relation, in the perception of sensory stimuli, and c) the time management in motor performance. In these processes prefrontal cortex has been recently shown to play a key role (see Rubia and Smith, 2004 for a review), as well as other well-known and basic structures (cerebellum and basal ganglia) responsible for motor timing control. More specifically, these investigations are aimed to closer examine the temporal variables underlying the execution of motor acts related to audiovisual stimuli.
    • Rubia, K., & Smith, A. (2004). The neural correlates of cognitive time management: a review. Acta Neurobiol Exp, 64(3), 329-340.
    • Kohler, E., Keysers, C., Umilta`, M. A., Fogassi, L., Gallese, V., Rizzolatti, G. (2002). Hearing Sounds, Understanding Actions: Action Representation in Mirror Neurons. Science, 297, 846-848.

Psychotechnologies and disabilities

  • Human factors, accessibility and usability
  • Assistive technologies.

Computational Modeling

  • ICA analysis of fMRI data.
  • Relative entropy and music genre categorization.
  • Neural models of music processing modules.

Cognitive Neuropsychology

  • Assessment of executive functions.
  • Validation and scoring of neuropsychological tests.

Frontal lobe functioning

  • Strategies and heuristics in spatial planning and navigation:
    Visuo-spatial planning is a process based on heuristics and is carried out in small units during information processing and not in a specific stage before execution of a spatial task. The ability to modifying the plan during the execution of a task was hypothesized to be related to the mid-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (BA9), interacting with the posterior parietal and other brain areas. This hypothesis has been tested in brain injured and healthy subjects, also using neuroimaging techniques.
    • Basso, D., Lotze, M., Vitale, L., Ferreri, F., Bisiacchi, P.S., Olivetti Belardinelli, M., Rossini, P.M., & Birbaumer, N. (2006). The role of prefrontal cortex on visuo-spatial planning: A repetitive-TMS study. Experimental Brain Research, 171(3), 411-415.
    • Basso, D., Birbaumer, N., Veit, R., Olivetti-Belardinelli, M., & Lotze, M. (2006). Visuo-spatial planning in a labyrinth task: A fMRI study. Neuroimage 31(suppl.1).
    • Basso, D., Saracini, C., Lotze, M., Olivetti-Belardinelli, M., & Birbaumer, N. (2005). Repetitive TMS stimulation on virtual 3D navigation: Gender differences in frontal and parietal involvement. In: B. Hommel, G. P. H. Band, W. La Heij, & G. Wolters (a cura di), Proceedings of the XIV meeting of the ESCOP. (p. 97).
    • Basso, D., Bisiacchi, P.S., & Olivetti Belardinelli, M.. Influence of cognitive style on visuo-spatial planning performance. (In preparation).
  • Feedforward processing in action selection:
    Feedforward processing is considered as a mechanisms to control behaviour, in the modelling of mental processes, as in cognitive psychology to investigate the architecture of mind, as in neuropsychology to detecting the way cellular assemblies and cerebral areas are connected.
    Models of action processes and the control of behaviour based on feedforward processing are evaluated in their possibilities of explanation of mental events.
    • Basso, D., & Olivetti Belardinelli, M. (2006). The role of feedforward paradigm in cognitive psychology. Cognitive Processing, 7(2), 73-88.
    • Olivetti Belardinelli, M., & Basso, D. (2001). The role of feedforward control in motor planning processes. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 24, 896-897.
  • Decision making and intentionality:
    Intentionality is studied evaluating how goals and plans affect the cognitive process of taking a decision. Our purpose is the description of the conditions in which a task could determine a change in the intentions of a subjects in order to achieve a goal.
    EEG techniques are used to evaluate the mental pattern of activity in subjects performing a visuo-spatial decision-making task.
    • Rea, M., Basso, D., Lucci, G., Olivetti Belardinelli, M., & Gentilomo, A.. EEG activity of associative cortices in low-level decision making about visuo-spatial patterns. (In preparation).

Mental Imagery in different sensory modalities

  • Mental imagery is the cognitive process underling image generation. An image is generated when perceptual information is recalled from long-term memory and is loaded on working memory system, usually resulting as an introspective experience of our perception. This internal representation can be also depicted and manipulated, with fundamental implications for cognitive processes such as learning, remembering, problem solving, motion, language and perception. Different approaches have been used through years to study mental imagery (self-report questionnaires, neuropsychology, brain mapping techniques, objective behavioural measures) Although research paid the most of attention to visual imagery modality, over the past few years mental imagery has been investigated in different sensory modalities as well.
    Relevant issues investigated by our laboratory are:
    • neural mechanisms involved during image generation in different sensory modalities;
    • properties of olfactory and gustatory imagery systems;
    • the vividness of imagery.