Welcome to the Active Perception Group.

The main question driving work in the lab is how the brain constructs our subjective experience of the world as we actively engage with our surroundings. We study the interaction of perception, attention, memory and action within a cognitive neuroscience framework. Specifically, our approach can be described as "active perception": while most studies of perception are based on responses to an abstract stimulus on a single trial during steady fixation, our work examines the way that perception interacts with context, action (particularly eye movements), memory, emotion and the tasks goals.

Research in the lab currently focusses on spatial and temporal aspects of active perception of objects, scenes and events (ERC project CoPeST), characterizing and improving brain mechanisms of attention (ATTEND project), awareness and processing of information outside of consciousness, mechanisms underlying the perception of a stable world despite eye movements and, as an ongoing side project, art and neuroscience.

The Active Perception Lab is part of the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC) at the University of Trento. The Center includes state-of-the-art research facilities, including a research-only MRI scanner, MEG, EEG and TMS, as well as behavioural, eye-tracking and motion-tracking laboratories. English is the official language of CIMeC, where a large proportion of the faculty members, post-docs and students come from outside of Italy.

The University of Trento is typically ranked first among research universities in Italy, and the Trentino region is consistently top of the lists for quality of life and the most efficient public services in the country. It is located in a scenic natural setting in the Alps, near the Dolomite mountains, Lake Garda and a large number of culturally, architecturally and historically rich cities.

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