About.
Faculty of the Department of Psychology at Columbia University in the city of New York.
My research focuses on the psychological and neural mechanisms of Attention, Perception, and Mental Imagery.
In the Department, I Teach Neuroscience courses (both introductory and advanced seminars) and serve as the Director of the Neuroscience and Behavior Major.
How did I get here? After completing my Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology and Psychophysiology at the Department of Cognitive Psychology, Sapienza, University of Rome, I became increasingly interested in the neural basis of attention and cognitive control. As part of my training, under Dr. Jin Fan’s mentorship, the Director of the Neuroimaging Laboratory at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and with a dual-appointment at the Department of Psychology, Queens College, CUNY, I have developed unimodal and crossmodal paradigms with the conceptualization of attention as an organ system consisting of specialized functions and networks in the brain.
What am I working on now? Compared to other modalities, the investigation of visual attentional functions has attracted to a greater interest in the past years, possibly due to the existence of a so called “modality dominance”, a bias towards the processing of visual stimuli to counteract the low altering effect of visual stimulation. A great extent of discoveries resulted from such focus on the visual modality but whether similar neural and behavioural mechanisms characterize also the other sensory modalities (e.g., auditory) is less clear.
My effort is currently devoted in understanding what distinguishes human imagination from perception.
Publications.
(article, 2022) The cost of attentional reorienting on conscious visual perception: an MEG study
Spagna, A., …; Bartolomeo, P. (2022).
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(article, 2021) Visual mental imagery engages the left fusiform gyrus, but not the early visual cortex: a meta-analysis of neuroimaging evidence
Alfredo Spagna, Dounia Hajhajate, Jianghao Liu, Paolo Bartolomeo
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(article, 2022) Cognitive Considerations in Major Depression: Evaluating the Effects of Pharmacotherapy and ECT on Mood and Executive Control Deficits
Alfredo Spagna,…, Yanghua Tian
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The Living Lab.
The Living Lab is an initiative created by Alfredo Spagna that seek to draw connections across work in various disciplines to tell societally relevant stories. Lab members fosters interdisciplinary collaborations to engage research topics in new ways. Broadly, we have done this by recruiting creative individuals belonging to contrasting areas of study (psychology, journalism, neuroscience, theater, and philosophy, just to name a few). Below, you will find a list of projects we are currently working on:
Juan Guerrero: Diversity Equity and Inclusion
The demand for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) trainings has been steadily increasing for many years. The aim to cultivate sophisticated work environments that benefit from diverse backgrounds, ideas, and abilities has become a priority for leading organizations and corporations worldwide. This steep incline in demand has engendered myriad new DEI educational approaches offered across the U.S. However, few research studies have aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the vast range of tactics being employed by the various DEI trainings aiming to improve work cultures in our society. Here, we examine whether the use of neuroscientific findings related to implicit bias and prejudice strengthen or weaken the credibility of DEI training models. We also aim to quantify the extent to which applying a neuroscientific lens in DEI models impacts the probability of observable behavioral shifts in those exposed to such educational paradigms.
Chloe Lambert: creating an English version of the Battery for Imagery and Perception (eBIP)
I am working on incorporating eyetracking and EEG to eBIP, which is the first English version battery assessing visual mental imagery (VMI). This project aims to not only assess VMI, but also to understand the oculomotor behavior and brain waves associated with this cognitive process.
Natalie Baer: attention in mental imagery
I am studying if we can spatially orient people’s attention in mental imagery and how that process differs from attentional cueing in perception.
Vedika Basavatia: Understand the neural basis of our motivation to act in an intentional manner
I am working on a project attempting to understand the neural basis of our motivation to act in an intentional manner, using movement analysis and mobile EEG. I am driven by the fundamental questions, why do we do the things we do, and how are these urges represented in our brains?