Publications

We appraise other people’s emotions by combining multiple sources of information, including somatic facial/body reactions and the …

In the early days of the Covid19 pandemic, individuals were asked to perform costly actions to reduce harm to strangers, even while the …

Recent research has explored the effectiveness of interactive virtual experiences in managing pain and anxiety in children during …

The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound negative impact on the psychological wellbeing of healthcare providers (HPs), but little is known …

Our emotions may influence how we interact with others. Previous studies have shown an important role of emotion induction in …

Medical students and professional healthcare providers often underestimate patients’ pain, together with decreased neural responses to …

Theoretical accounts of pain and empirical evidence indicate that pain and cognitive control share common neurocognitive processes. …

Evaluating correctly others’ pain is a crucial prosocial ability, especially relevant for the healthcare system. In clinical …

Previous studies found that distracting someone through a challenging activity leads to hypoalgesia, an effect mediated by parietal and …

In the last two years, governments of many countries imposed heavy social restrictions to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus, …

Vocal emotion recognition, a key determinant to analyzing a speaker’s emotional state, is known to be impaired following cerebellar …

Pain inadequate treatment is frequent in modern society, with major medical, ethical, and financial implications. In many healthcare …

Estimating others’ pain is a challenging inferential process, associated with a high degree of uncertainty. The present study …

Extensive neuroimaging literature suggests that understanding others’ thoughts and emotions engages a wide network encompassing …

Healthcare providers often underestimate patients’ pain, sometimes even when aware of their reports. This could be the effect of …

Embodied models of social cognition argue that others’ emotional states are processed by re-enacting a representation of the same …

Neuroimaging studies suggest that understanding emotions in others engages brain regions partially common to those associated with more …

Embodied models suggest that moral judgments are strongly intertwined with first-hand somatic experiences, with some pointing to …

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by maladaptive social functioning, and widespread negativity biases. The neural …

Expectations affect the subjective experience of pain by increasing sensitivity to noxious events, an effect underlain by brain regions …

Pain undertreatment, or oligoanalgesia, is frequent in the emergency department (ED), with major medical, ethical, and financial …

Embodied models of social cognition argue that others’ affective states are processed by re-enacting a sensory-specific representation …

Seminal theories posit that social and physical suffering underlie partly-common representational code. It is unclear, however, if this …

Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) often engage in dangerous self-injurious behaviors (SIBs) as a maladaptive …

Expectations modulate the subjective experience of pain by increasing sensitivity to nociceptive inputs, an effect mediated by brain …

People’s sensitivity to first-hand pain is affected by their ongoing emotions, with positive states (joy, amusement) exerting …

The superior temporal sulcus (STS) is a major component of the human face perception network, implicated in processing dynamic …

Attention and perception are potentiated for emotionally significant stimuli, promoting efficient reactivity and survival. But does …

In the last decade, a growing research effort in behavioral sciences, especially psychology and neuroscience, has been invested in the …

The anterior insula (AI) and mid-anterior cingulate cortex (mACC) have repeatedly been implicated in first-hand and vicarious …

Pain sensitivity increases when a noxious stimulus is preceded by cues predicting higher intensity. However, it is unclear whether the …

The ability to select, within the complexity of sensory input, the information most relevant for our purposes is influenced by both …

Forming and updating impressions about others is critical in everyday life and engages portions of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex …

Despite an overall consensus that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) entails atypical processing of human faces and emotional expressions, …

Understanding emotions in others engages specific brain regions in temporal and medial prefrontal cortices. These activations are often …

Whether motor and linguistic representations of actions share common neural structures has recently been the focus of an animated …

Rejections of unfair offers in the ultimatum game (UG) are commonly assumed to reflect negative emotional arousal mediated by the …

A crucial feature of socially adaptive behavior is the ability to recognize when our actions harm other individuals. Previous research …

Structural and functional studies have shown that schizophrenia is often associated with frontolimbic abnormalities in the prefrontal …

Human ability to imitate movements is instantiated in parietal, premotor and opercular structures, often referred to as the human …

Embodied theories hold that understanding what another person is doing requires the observer to map that action directly onto his or …

The discovery of regions in the human brain (e.g., insula and cingulate cortex) that activate both under direct exposure to pain and …

Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies suggest distinct body representations involved in coding one’s and others’ body. …

Traditionally the motor system was thought of as a movement output device that, after brain damage, can impede patients from correctly …

The “irrational” rejections of unfair offers by people playing the Ultimatum Game (UG), a widely used laboratory model of economical …

Neuropsychological studies suggest that the human brain is endowed with two body representations: the body schema (BS), coding the …

An experiment was conducted to contrast the motor performance of three groups (N = 20) of participants: (1) patients with confirmed …

Cognitive neuroscientists have contributed to the understanding of imitation according to their expertise. Neuropsychologists first …

Classical economical theory sees rejections of unfair offers by people playing the Ultimatum Game (UG) as “irrational”. Recent studies …

Neuropsychological studies suggest that patients with left parietal lesions may show impaired localization of parts of either their own …

When looking to our reflection, or moving a video-game character, we see our own movement preformed by an agent which is physically …