The objectives of the Neuroscience and Society Lab (iNSuLa) are to explore social and cognitive processes by using an integrative approach that brings together neurological, psychological and physiological models of the human brain within neuroscience.

More specifically, we are interested in investigating issues of interest to social psychologists (such as intergroup cognition and emotion, stereotyping, self-other distinction, decision making) and cognitive scientists (such as imitation, action simulation, action understanding, body representations) using methods traditionally employed by cognitive neuroscientists (such as human neuropsychology, functional brain imaging, and transcranial magnetic stimulation).

In the iNSuLa Lab we have been investigating the involvement of the motor system in higher cognitive functions (for a review, see Rumiati et at., 2010). While it has traditionally been seen as a movement output device, recent research, including that from this lab, has clearly demonstrated that the motor system is involved in many relevant cognitive functions such as motor imagery, object and action recognition, and language understanding. Thus, the key question now is not so much whether the motor system is involved in cognition, but the conditions under which its involvement occurs. 

Beyond detailed experience in the motor system, iNSuLa Lab studied food processing and social group information. These research programs included projects concerning moral and risk decision making, ingroup and outgroup categorization in patients with brain damage and in healthy individual using fMRI and structural imaging, the neuropsychology of aging, multimodal processing of emotional expressions, food characterization and choice, as well as semantic processing. 

Now, the laboratory's research lines focus on: 

• spatial cognition, and how it is impacted by a variety of different factors such as gender, top-down strategies, sex hormones, bottom-up influences and cognitive traits;
• neural correlates of various aspects of emotions, including emotion regulation, emotional intelligence, the interaction with cognitive processes, as well as their expression in complex social contexts and in psychopathological patients;
• the influence of personality on socio-cognitive skills, spanning both behavioral and neural domains, across diverse populations including the general population and patients;
• the impact of sports activity and the type of sport practiced on cognitive reserve and related neural correlates in young adults and the elderly;
• environmental and cognitive factors contributing to establish a pool of cognitive resources (i.e., cognitive reserve) possibly protecting from cognitive decline, both in young and older adults;
• how factors such as emotions and personality traits influence performance in numeracy tests. I investigate these relationships using both self-reports and physiological measures, including skin conductance, heart rate variability, and cortisol levels;
• gender differences, attention, anxiety, cognitive reserve and the application of techniques such as EEG, tDCS, and TMS.