Luigi Cattaneo

Academic carreer:

Previous teaching activity:

Research interests: I have been conducting research in the field of systems physiology and cognitive neuroscience for many years. The main theme of my research is to understand the biological and physiological correlates of behavior in humans, especially regarding the control of movement. The topics of my research are: sensorimotor transformations for movements of the upper limb and face. Particular attention is given to how complex categories such as the geometry of objects, the vision of biological movement, language and numerical quantities are represented in the motor system. Recently, I directed my attention to the ability of the human brain to establish flexible sensorimotor associations, based on abstract rules. In my research activity I have never lost sight of my clinical neurologist training and I text my psychophysiological hypotheses also on groups of patients. My research activity is carried out in complete autonomy in all its phases, including the conception and execution of experiments and the interpretation of scientific data. Given my clinical background I am extremely motivated to test the theoretical models developed with my basic research in a clinical setting. I am convinced of the importance of reconciling the basic physiology with the clinical disciplines of neurosurgery, neurology, neuroradiology and clinical neurophysiology.

Research tools: I have mainly used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), of which I have deep knowledge. I am familiar with and have used also other methods of non-invasive brain stimulation (tDCS), the study of motion kinematics, the spectral analysis of EEG and event-related evoked potentials and structural neuroimaging (tractography) and functional (fMRI) techniques.

I am currently working on how brain stimulation can be used to unveil brain connectivity.

Active collaborations:

• Università degli Studi di Parma - Prof. Giovanni Pavesi.
• Università degli Studi di Parma - Prof. Giacomo Rizzolatti.
• Université de la Mediterranée (Marseille): Dr. Thomas Brochier.
• Università degli Studi di Bologna – Prof. Elisabetta Làdavas.
• Università degli Studi di Parma - Prof. Luca Bonini.
• Univeristà di Grenoble – Prof. Marc Sato
• Arizona State Univerity – Prof. Arthur Glenberg
• University of Salzburg – Dr. Guido Barchiesi.
• University of Birmingham – Prof. Uta Noppeney
• University of Surrey (London) – Prof. Juha Silvanto
• Università di Sassari – Prof. Franca Deriu
• Università di Milano-Bicocca – Prof. Marco Marelli
• Università di Verona - Prof. Francesco Sala

Member of the following scientific societies: The Brainstem Society; Società Italiana di Neurologia (SIN); Società Italiana di Psicofisiologia (SIPF); Società Italiana di Fisiologia (SIF).

Member of the board of the Società Italiana di Psicofisiologia (SIPF) from 2015 to 2017.

SIPF Price “Premio della Società Italiana di Psicofisiologia 2015 per la brillante attività di ricerca nell’ambito della psicofisiologia” awarded in Lucca, November 2015.

ad-hoc invitations to national and international meetings:

• “New approaches to the study of action observation using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)” presented at the Trieste Symposium on Perception and Cognition  - October 28, 2010 in Trieste (Italy).
• "Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation approaches to action understanding” presented at the Italy-Israel Dialogue on Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. November 7-8, 2011 at the Inter-disciplinary college of Herzliya, (Israel).
• “Motor mirroring meets motor performance” presented at the 16th world congress of psychophysiology. September 13-17, 2012 in Pisa (Italy).
• “Early and Late Motor responses to Action Observation” presented at the meeting Mirror neurons: new frontiers 20 years after their discovery. September 2, 2012 at Erice (Italy).
• “Motor resonance meets motor performance” as an Institute of Movement Neuroscience Symposium. May 7, 2013 at the Sobell Department of Movement Neuroscience – UCL – London (UK).
• “Bottom-up and Top-down responses to action observation” Seminar at the Facoltà di Psicologia, Università di Bologna. May 30, 2013.
• “Motor mirroring meets motor performance” – Formal Donders DCC lecture.  October 8, 2013 at the Radboud Universiteit - Nijmengen (NL).
• “Le basi neurali delle scelte di azione” – semiar held the Scuola di Dottorato di Scienze della Vita e della Salute, University of Verona. December 17, 2014
• “Motor representations in the brain” seminar at the Interdisciplinary workshop on Practical Reasoning and Motor Representation at the University of Warwick (UK). June 2, 2015.
• Lectio magistralis at the National congress of the Italian Psychophysiological society, Novmber 20, 2015 in Lucca (Italy).
• “Mapping sensorimotor functions in the human premotor cortex” presented at the international neuropsychological symposium (INS), Cassis (France) 30 giugno 2018.
• “inhibitory set-related activity in the dorsal premotor cortex” seminar held at the Centro di Neurofisiologia Traslazionale del linguaggio e della comunicazione IIT@UNIFE. University of Ferrara, on June 13, 2018
• Organizer of the symposium “Behaviorally-committed representation of the world in the primate brain: objects agents and space” 19th World Congress of Psychophysiology (IOP2018), Lucca, 6 settembre 2018.
• Organizer of the symposium “Visual and auditory praxic environment in the primate brain: space, objects and agents” XXVI Congresso Nazionale SIPF, Turin, 15-17 Novembre 2018
• Talk on “Intraoperative assessment of parietal-frontal connectivity” at the “Brain Evoked Potentials in the context of Neurosurgery” held in Montpellier the 9th and 10th of June 2022

REVIEWER FOR GRANTING AGENCIES: Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) (2012-2018); Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions - Research Fellowship Programme (2013); Manchester University; mental health and neurodegeneration research group. (2014); The Danish Council for Independent Research (2015).

EDITORIAL ACTIVITY:

Academic Editor for PLOS One (since 2013). Ad-hoc reviewing editor for eLife (2016)

Member of the Editorial Advisory Board del Journal of Cognitive Enhancement (since 2016)

Ad-hoc reviewer for: Acta Psychologica; Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology; Annals of Internal Medicine; Behavioral Brain Research; Brain; Brain Topography; Cerebral Cortex; Clinical Neurophysiology; Cognition; Consciousness and Cognition; Cortex; European Journal of Neurology; European Journal of Neuroscience; Frontiers in Human Neuroscience; Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry; Journal of Neurophysiology; Journal of Neuroscience; Journal of Psychiatry; JoVE - Journal of Video Experiments; Muscle and Nerve; Neuroimage; Neurology Research International; Neuropsychologia; Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B; PLOS One; Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience; Brain Stimulation, Nature Communications, Scientific Reports.

AWARDED GRANTS