Brains_developing
Developing brains
Developing minds

About Me

I am a PhD candidate at the Donders Institute, currently working on the MOTION European project (MSCA): "Mobile Technology for Infant Social-Cognitive Neuroscience: Interdisciplinary Training Network for Innovative Infancy Research".

I am fascinated by social-cognitive development in early childhood and how this development shows in the brain and behaviour. My main interest understanding how infants are able to extract complex statistical information from the environment around them and use this knowledge to predict what will happen next. I use EEG and fNIRS to explore the neural correlates of action observation and prediction in infancy. I use eye-tracking (pupillometry) to study how infants can predict the value of upcoming information.

  • Age 29
  • Employer Donders Center for Cognition
  • Group Baby Brain
  • Residence Nethelands
  • E-mail tommaso.ghilardi@donders.ru.nl

What I Do

Brain

I use EEG and NIRS to explore the neural correlates of action observation and prediction in infancy. Recently I have been exploring whether infants' brain activity over the motor area reflects their prediction of an upcoming action and its probability.

Code

I have fun playing around with multiple programming languages. For my analysis, I use a combination of Python, Matlab, and R. To code for stimuli I use both Presentation and PsychoPy.

Behaviour

I use behavioural measures with both adults and infants (e.g. eye-tracking) to study the learning of statistical information embedded in action sequences. In addition, I integrate behavioural and neurophysiological indeces to get a more complete picture of my data.

Reading

I like to keep up to date with the latest findings and studies in my field. I also like to explore studies outside my comfort zone and draw inspiration from other fields.

Affiliations

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Short Resume

Main experiences

2018 - Current
Donders Centre for Cognition

PhD developemntal science

PhD at the Baby and Child Research Center.

2019 - Current
Donders Centre for Cognition

EEG Lab support

EEG lab trainings

2022
Birkbeck University

Visiting PhD

Visit to the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development

2015 - 2018
University of Trento

Internship

Intership at the Affiliative Behavior and Physiology Lab.

2016 - 2017
Nagasaki University

Thesis Research Erasmus+

Thesis research projects conducted at the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior.

Education

2016-2018
University of Trento

M.Sc. Pychology-Neuroscience

First Class Honours.
Thesis title : Ethnicity and gender modulate the recognition of emotional facial expression.

2013-2016
University of Trento

B.Sc. Sciences and techniques of cognitive psychology

Coding Skills

Python

90%

R

90%

Matlab

80%

Experiment design

Psychopy

95%

Presentation

75%

Media Creation Skills

Photoshop

95%

Premiere Pro

75%

Illustration

60%

Techniques

  • EEG
  • fNIRS
  • Eye-tracking
  • Pupillometry
  • Behavioural
  • EMG

Awards

Travel grant

Radboud internationalization travel grant
2022

Travel Award

Sackler Colloquium “The Brain Produces Mind by Modeling”
2019

Merit Award Trento University

2017

Blog

Sometimes I like to write short blogs about things that happen in my phd or in my life that I think are interesting. I hope that sharing my experiences might be of help/entertainment to someone.

If Coding == True: Research
12 2 2021

If Coding == True: Research

Hobby

In my free time, I enjoy taking photographs of what is happening around me...

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Research

Articles

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Ghilardi, T., Meyer, M., Monroy, C. D., Gerson, S. A. & Hunnius, S. (Accpeted registered report in completion). Statistics in motion: Does the infant motor system predict actions based on their transitional probability? Developmental Science.
2022
Ghilardi, T., Meyer, M. & Hunnius, S. Predictive motor activation: Modulated by expectancy or predictability?. PsyArXiv.
2021
Poli, F., Ghilardi, T., Mars, R. B., Hinne, M. & Hunnius, S. 8-month-old infants meta-learn from sparse evidence. PsyArXiv.
2017
Bonassi, A., Ghilardi, T., Gabrieli, G., Truzzi, A., Doi, H., Borelli, J. L., ... & Esposito, G. (2021). The recognition of cross-cultural emotional faces is affected by intensity and ethnicity in a Japanese sample. Behavioral Sciences 11 (5), 59.
2017
Bonassi, A., Ghilardi, T., Truzzi, A., Cataldo, I., Azhari, A., Setoh, P., Esposito, G. (2017). Dataset on genetic and physiological adults׳ responses to social distress. Data in brief, 13, 742-748.

Talks & Posters

Poster - 2022

Predicting the value of information: an infant study. The International Congress of Infant Studies (ICIS) / Lancaster Conference on Infant & Early Child Development (LCICD)

Poster - 2022

Statistics in motion: Does the infant motor system predict actions based on their transitional probability?. The International Congress of Infant Studies (ICIS)

Talk - 2022

Statistics in motion: predicting actions based on their transitional probability. Conference on Interdisciplinary Advances in Statistical Learning (StatLearnBCBL)

Poster - 2020

Building action expectations in infants: An fnirs study. Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development(BCCCD).

Poster - 2018

The influence of ethnicity in the recognition ability of emotional faces and voices, Cognitive Science Arena (CSA).

Poster - 2017

Genetic factors and adults’ expectations towards relationships interact in affecting physiological responsesto social distress, Workshop on Cognition Evolution (CogEvo)