PROF. ERALDO PAULESU

Principle Investigator

Eraldo Paulesu is a neurologist and a cognitive neuroscientist. In the early 90s, with Chris Frith and Richard Frackowiak, he pioneered the combination of behavioural techniques inspired by cognitive models and neurophysiological observations based on functional imaging techniques. Among his main scientific achievements, the first definition of the functional anatomy of the phonological loop and its subcomponents; the identification of the vestibular cortical pathways and their role in the modulation of conscious perception in right brain damage patients; the identification of neural pathways of cardiac pain and the pathological lack of it; the identification of shared dysfunctional cognitive and anatomical patterns in dyslexia across cultures; the definition of neurophysiological correlates of motor awareness and its impairments in anosognosia for hemiplegia and the first identifications of mirror neuron activity in humans. More recently, together with the Galeazzi fMRI Unit team, prof. Paulesu is defining the neural bases of healthy aging of the motor system and the brain correlates of impoverished motor experience typical of orthopaedic patients. He is also actively studying motor disorders in dyslexia.