Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems

CNCShomeweb The Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems (CNCS) of IIT@UniTn focuses on a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the computational abilities of the brain.

Currently the department focuses on studies with human subjects, including psychophysical techniques, functional imaging, and trans-cranial stimulation, along with computational approaches.

Research includes examining how sensory cues and active movements of the body are integrated to support perception, studying brain mechanisms for attention and timing, and devising advanced methods for decoding/encoding neurophysiological signals.

The Center Research Labs

Mathematical Methods

Cover of Nature Reviews Neuroscience in March 2009 inspired by our work

The laboratory of Neural Computation is interested in understanding how populations of neurons in the cerebral cortex encode and the exchange information. The laboratory investigates these issues by developing mathematical methods for single trial analysis of neural population responses and by developing biologically plausible neural network models of cortical function and dynamics.

The two main goals of the Active Vision Laboratory are:

developing sophisticated rendering systems that will allow the generation of more realistic and ecologically valid displays;
developing computational models of 3D perceptual processes and testing the biological validity of these models with the rendering tools described below.

The current research activities of this lab are:

3D information for perception and action
Holographic systems
Full cue environments and “real objects”
Active vision

We are interested in all aspects of vision and visual perception studied in the healthy and in the pathological brain. In particular we use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to study the mechanisms of intracortical inhibition and excitation that guide human response to visual stimuli and perceptual decision making.

Research Activites

Our overarching goal is to determine what cortical areas are necessary for tasks of visual attention and visual integration in space and time. All these functions can be severely impaired in cerebral lesion patients. Therefore our main goal is to develop new techniques of rehabilitation using TMS and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).