Psychophysiology

Prof. Vera Ferrari

Head of Laboratory:	Prof.ssa Vera Ferrari
Lab Members:	Vera Ferrari - Associate Professor Francesca Canturi - PhD Student

Unipr Web Page

	Main reserch lines
	▪ The role of experience and learning in regulating the interference of emotional distractors during specific cognitive activities (goal-directed task) ▪ Retrieval effect: mechanisms underlying the Long Term Memory advantage for complex scenes ▪ Mechanisms of emotional regulation over the life span
	Techniques in use
	Motivated attention, learning and memory are investigated on human subjects by means of laboratory procedures that involve the presentation of a variety of visual and acoustic stimuli that may vary in terms of emotional content and task requirement. Behavioral performance (such as reaction times and accuracy) is often complemented by the measurement of surface cortical activity (EEG) analyzed in terms of event-related potentials (ERP) and oscillatory brain activity (theta, alpha, beta, gammas). In addition to the EEG activity, eye movements (voluntary and reflex saccades, fixations) are also studied during the exploration of the visual stimulus as a probe of attentional and motivational processes. Behavioral research (self-reports and performance) is also carried out with on-line data collection.
	Main equipments
	▪ EEG activity (64-channel recording system) ▪ Eye activity (TOBII Eye Tracker 4C)
	Pubblications
	Bradley, M. M., Costa, V. D., Ferrari, V., Codispoti, M., Fitzsimmons, J. R., & Lang, P. J. (2015). Imaging distributed and massed repetitions of natural scenes: Spontaneous retrieval and maintenance. Human Brain Mapping, 36(4), 1381-1392. Codispoti, M., De Cesarei, A., Biondi, S., & Ferrari, V. (2016). The fate of unattended stimuli and emotional habituation: Behavioral interference and cortical changes. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 16, 1063-1073. Ferrari, V., De Cesarei, A., Mastria, S., Lugli, L., Baroni, G., Nicoletti, R., & Codispoti, M. (2016). Novelty and emotion: Pupillary and cortical responses during viewing of natural scenes. Biological Psychology, 113, 75-82. Ferrari, V., Codispoti, M., & Bradley, M. M. (2017). Repetition and ERPs during emotional scene processing: A selective review. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 111, 170-177. Ferrari, V., Mastria, S., & Codispoti, M. (2020). The interplay between attention and long‐term memory in affective habituation. Psychophysiology, 57(6), e13572. Ferrari, V., Canturi, F., & Codispoti, M. (2022). Stimulus novelty and emotionality interact in the processing of visual distractors. Biological Psychology, 167, 108238. Mastria, S., Ferrari, V., & Codispoti, M. (2017). Emotional picture perception: repetition effects in free-viewing and during an explicit categorization task. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 1001. Micucci, A., Ferrari, V., De Cesarei, A., & Codispoti, M. (2020). Contextual modulation of emotional distraction: Attentional capture and motivational significance. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 32(4), 621-633.


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