About me

I’m an affective and cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Bari.

My research focuses on the neural mechanisms of affective processing, with the goal of understanding how emotions and motivation function in neurotypical conditions and how they are altered in schizophrenia or under life stress.

A first line of work questions the idea of a single emotional circuit that mediates responses across all affective contexts. fMRI studies instead show the engagement of distinct networks depending on the type of experience (perception, imagery, anticipation), suggesting a plurality of functional systems.

A second area examines responses to visual emotional stimuli, highlighting a specialization for rapid affective processing. However, environmental events such as stress or trauma can blunt this response, leading to a phenomenon of visual hypoemotionality.

Finally, a third line of research focuses on reward processing, where affective and motivational processes appear to converge on a neural “common currency” centred on striatal and prefrontal circuits. Environmental vulnerability of these systems is crucial for understanding conditions such as anhedonia.