Overview | Research directions | Members | Publications | Grants | Ongoing collaborations 

Overview

Our research is mainly focused on the neurobiology of language. We combine theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, psychophysics, and neuropsychological methods with multimodal neuroimaging techniques (fMRI, sMRI, DWI, MEG, EEG) to understand the neural mechanisms underlying normal and pathological language functions and language development.
We employ advanced neuroimaging data analysis methods, leveraging univariate and multivariate statistical approaches, structural and functional connectivity, as well as machine learning classification. 

Research directions

  • Concepts as grounded in personal experience: How are concepts, semantic features and semantic categories represented in the brain? What is the role of the individual lifetime experience in concept formation? Are grounded conceptual representations accessed independently of stimulus awareness?
  • Neurodevelopmental readiness for language: What are the early brain maturation processes that underlie language acquisition? Does knowledge of these early processes inform the prediction of normal versus impaired language development?
  • Morphosyntactic processing in aphasia: How can we take advantage of the cross-linguistic variety in morphosyntactic specifications to investigate agrammatic disorders in aphasic patients? Can we use lesion-symptom mapping approaches to identify the anatomy-functional correlate of morphosyntactic processing?
  • Narrative language processing: How are phonological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic information integrated during natural speech processing? Can we delineate a neurolinguistic grammar based on fMRI and EEG measurements?
  • Recursive hierarchical syntactic structures: What are the underlying neurocomputational mechanisms? Are these mechanisms shared across cognitive domains (language, music, action)?
  • Syntax-semantic interface: What are the neural mechanisms of sentential negation? How are grounded conceptual representations modulated by sentential negation? How does the spatio-temporal integration of syntactic and semantic information unfold during language processing?

Members

Alumni 

  • Marta Ghio (post-doc 2019-201, currently post-doc at University of Duesseldorf, Germany);
  • Toni Polonijo (Erasmus student 2019-2020, currently working as a software engineer at Zenitel, Rijeka, Croatia);
  • Giorgia Bontempi (M.Sc. student 2020-2021);
  • Barbara Cassone (M.Sc. student 2020-2021);
  • Alice Guerrini (M.Sc. student 2020-2021).

Publications

 For a complete list see Marco Tettamanti personal page 

Grants

  • 2021-2022: University of Trento, post-doc fellowship for Seal of Excellence Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions applicants awarded to Tudor Catalin Popescu (PI: Marco Tettamanti);
  • 2019-2021: A multimodal investigation on the embodiment of emotion concepts under subliminal lexical-semantic processing conditions (id. University of Trento, Decree n.48, 23.05.2019; PI: Marco Tettamanti)

Ongoing collaborations

  • Cristina Baldoli, OSR, Milan, Italy;
  • Valentina Bambini, IUSS, Pavia, Italy;
  • Marco Battaglia, University of Toronto, Canada;
  • Christian Bellebaum, University of Dusseldorf, Germany;
  • Manuela Berlingeri, University of Urbino, Italy;
  • Simona Brambati, Université de Montreal, Canada;
  • Pasquale A. Della Rosa, OSR, Milan, Italy;
  • Marta Ghio, University of Dusseldorf, Germany;
  • Eraldo Paulesu, University Milano-Bicocca, Italy;
  • Daniela Perani, University Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milano, Italy.