Maurizio Corbetta
Department of Neuroscience of the University of Padova
Architecture and function of spontaneous brain activity in health and pathology
I will argue that spontaneous brain activity plays a major role in brain function and behavior, and it does so in surprising and unexpected ways. While for more than hundred years we have focused on understanding cognition by studying the brain in action, I will argue that there are many lessons to learn by studying the brain at rest. Furthermore, the study of the brain at rest is fundamental to understand pathology since most neurological and psychiatric disorders are disorders of connectivity that we can study beautifully and conveniently by studying patters of activity at rest.
Maurizio Corbetta is Full Professor and Chair of Neurology in the Department of Neuroscience of the University of Padua. He is Director of the Neurology Clinic at Azienda Ospedale-Università Padova, and Principal Investigator of the Venetian Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM).
Prof. Corbetta is also the founding director of the new Padova Neuroscience Center, a highly interdisciplinary research programme centered on the idea of brain networks in health and society. He is the former Norman J. Stupp Professor of Neurology, and Professor of Radiology, Anatomy and Neurobiology, and Bioengineering at Washington University School of Medicine. From 2001-to 2016 he was the Chief of the Division of Neuro-Rehabilitation, and Director of Neurological Rehabilitation at Washington University.
Prof. Corbetta has pioneered experiments on the neural mechanisms of human attention using Positron Emission Tomography (PET). He has discovered two brain networks dedicated to attention control, the dorsal and ventral attention networks, and developed a brain model of attention that has been cited in the literature more than 5,000 times. His clinical work has focused on the physiological correlates of focal injury. He has developed a pathogenetic model of the syndrome of hemispatial neglect. He is currently developing novel methods for studying the functional organization of the brain using functional connectivity MRI, magneto-encephalography (MEG), and electro-corticography (EcoG). He is also working on the effects of focal injuries on the network organization of brain systems with an eye to neuromodulation. His research has been recognized with several awards including a Highly Cited Researchers by Thompson Reuter based on the top 1% rate of citations in the last decade.
Professor Corbetta will deliver the HIBALL Lecture in Brain Analytics and Learning.
