My research line supports the concept of “top-down manipulation of internal representations at the basis of flexible cognition”. In particular, my research interests concern cognitive flexibility, the capacity to change the goal-directed behavior after a feedback, "cognitive vision", as the ability to flexibly perceive the environment thanks to attentional systems, and consciousness, an emergent property of the brain that allows to deliberately manipulate the perception in order to achieve a purpose. In my research I use the integrated top-down / bottom-up method of computational neuroscience/neuropsychology, which allows me to create simulated neuro-inspired embodied agents and to compare their behavior to the human one through an empirical analysis. This method allows us to study human consciousness and cognitive flexibility with future applications also in machine learning and robotics.
