My academic research

Studies

I have completed my Bachelor’s in Cognitive Psychology (2014) and later Master’s Degree in Cognitive Sciences (2017) at the University of Trento, Italy, with international internship experiences at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and at the Karolinksa Institute, Sweden.

I have then proceeded to carry out fundamental research in Cognitive Neuroscience and obtain my Ph.D. title (2022) at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

Research topics

During my doctoral studies, my research has focused on the perception of faces and voices. I have investigated the uni-sensory and multi-sensory perception of vocal and facial features, such as emotion and identity, in the neuro-typical population, as well as their uni-sensory perception in deprived population like congenitally blind individuals. I have conducted both behavioral studies, and neuroimaging studies through functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Additionally, I have collaborated in projects studying face and voice perception in individuals with various other characteristics, like anosmia, moebius syndrome and severe alcohol use disorder.

An anatomical image of my brain, acquired through MRI

Publications

Falagiarda, F.,* Mattioni, S.*, Gau, R., Rezk, M., Battal, C., Audenhaege, A. V., & Collignon, O. (2024). Supramodal representation of emotion expressions across the face and voice networks. Under submission.

Cerpelloni. F., Van Audenhaege, A., Matuszewski, J., Gau, R., Battal, C., Falagiarda, F., Op de Beeck, H. & Collignon, O. (2024). Reading without shape: brain adaptation to learning visual Braille. Under Review.

Occelli, V., Calce, R. P., D’Alessandro, M., Turini, J., Battal, C., Cattoir, S., Bottini, R., Falagiarda, F., & Collignon, O. (2023). Is Sight for Space and Sound for Time? Different Asymmetry of Spatiotemporal Interferences in Vision and Audition. Different Asymmetry of Spatiotemporal Interferences in Vision and Audition. Under submission.

Falagiarda, F.,* Occelli, V.*, & Collignon, O. (2024). Vision plays a calibrating role in discriminating threat-related vocal emotions. Emotion, 24(5), 1312–1321. ↗

Creupelandt, C., D’Hondt, F., De Timary, P., Falagiarda, F., Collignon, O., & Maurage, P. (2020). Selective visual and crossmodal impairment in the discrimination of anger and fear expressions in severe alcohol use disorder. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 213, 108079. ↗

Battal, C., Occelli, V., Bertonati, G., Falagiarda, F., & Collignon, O. (2020). General enhancement of spatial hearing in congenitally blind people. Psychological science, 31(9), 1129-1139. ↗

Falagiarda, F., & Collignon, O. (2019). Time-resolved discrimination of audio-visual emotion expressions. Cortex, 119, 184-194. ↗

Skills

My doctoral path has been an invaluable learning experience where I have had the chance to acquire a plethora of skills. I try to summarise them here below.
Although I believe that all of the following are soft skills, the list goes from slightly more field-specific to completely transferable.

  • Experimental designing: preparing experiments that follow the general principles of the scientific method as well as its specific applications through techniques in Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Data analyses and data visualisation: statistical analyses and modelization of various data types, i.e. behavioral and functional-MRI data
  • Data management: collecting and organising data, following standard practices when applicable (e.g. BIDS for neuroimaging data)
  • Some of the aforementioned points are achieved through the mastery of specific softwares/tools and their coding languages, like:
    Matlab with Psychtoolbox and SPM, R and RStudio, Jasp, SPSS, Git and GitHub, Open Science Framework and more
  • Scientific writing: drafting proposals for funding acquisition, journal articles and detailed reports of ongoing research projects
  • Long term project and time management.
    A Ph.D. is a project spanning several years that forcibly trains the ability create and adhere to medium-to-long term plans, breaking it down into significant stages
  • Self-motivation.
    While general goals are often set together with supervisors and collaborators, a Ph.D. still involves a significant amount of independent work, throughout which it is important to learn to maintain discipline and stay motivated
  • Public speaking: communication of the research results, often with the help of visuals, e.g. slide presentations, scientific posters, to more or less technical audiences
Poster presentation at a conference, 2021

Links

I conducted my Ph.D. at the Crossmodal Perception and Plasticity Lab

Here you can download my (professional) CV, which is a condensed version of the current page.

Do you have questions about my research and/or want to connect? Contact me!