Members

I’m a Philosopher of Science working on the theoretical foundations of neuroscience of consciousness. I’m also involved in DARE – Digital Lifelong Prevention, a project that develops technological solutions for preventive healthcare for Italy’s Ministry of Health.

Individually my research covers the perception of effort and how it is affected by the pain experience on a psychophysiological level.
Linked to that, I then explore the behavioural and cognitive changes in self-regulation due to pain.
As a group, we explore the use of virtual reality and eye-tracking with their ability to enhance performance across sport, military, aviation, and clinical settings.
As a new member of my team, the aim is to bridge the pain research and eye-tracking/virtual reality research already underway.

I study movement-related symptoms and their cortical representation in Complex Regional Pain Syndrome using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Neuroengineering, Medical Imaging, Artificial intelligence for medical applications

Currently, I am a trial manager on a UKRI Turing AI Acceleration Fellowship Project, where I am responsible for planning and running EEG-based BCI research trials – which primarily includes trials with patients who have prolonged disorders of consciousness and/or physical impairments resulting from injury or disease. My main area of research has a focus on brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies.

Using virtual reality to understand how body representation is distorted in chronic pain and also how VR can be used to rehabilitate and alter body perception to decrease pain.

Perception, upper-limb motor control, grip forces, virtual reality

I study the spinal and supraspinal neural control of dynamic movements, and the impact of pain, stress or anxiety, and musculoskeletal or neurological disorders on this control. To do this I use techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, surface electromyography (including high-density arrays), intramuscular electromyography, peripheral nerve stimulation and motion capture.

My background is in the use of non-invasive brain stimulation, neuroimaging and somatosensory psychophysics to explore sensory processing in health and disease. I am a more recent convert to using these techniques to explore how best to modulate chronic and neuropathic pain.