Ilaria Sani is Assistant Professor at the Department of Basic Neurosciences. Her research team is studying how different brain areas and connections contribute to the many facets of attention and how their malfunction can impair behavior. It combines cutting-edge tools from different disciplines such as Virtual Reality, multiple MRI techniques, big data analyses or single neurons recordings to meet the complexity of the brain and of behavior.

Ilaria considers that we all leave in an attentionally demanding society such that at any moment in time, attention needs to select from the flood of upcoming information only those relevant for a successful behavior. Any impairments of this process affect how children, friends, and elderly beloved ones learn, behave, manage their daily routine. Through her research within the Synapsy Center, Ilaria hopes to pinpoint the behavioral features and the brain structures that support healthy and deficient attention in order to develop behavioral and brain-based intervention strategies.

•  Page on the website of the Faculty of medicine

Understanding brain networks and mechanisms of attention for Mental Disorders

Ilaria Sani’s main Synapsy-related research project consists on developing an integrated approach that ranges from the quantification of behavior in VR to the fine-grained dissection of attentional connections. This approach is ultimately aimed at isolating specific components of attention that can be targeted in attention training and rehabilitation.Understanding brain networks and mechanisms of attention for Mental Disorders

Ilaria Sani’s main Synapsy-related research project consists on developing an integrated approach that ranges from the quantification of behavior in VR to the fine-grained dissection of attentional connections. This approach is ultimately aimed at isolating specific components of attention that can be targeted in attention training and rehabilitation.