Summary
My current work focuses on how Open Science contributes to the advancement of mental health research, with an emphasis on bridging research, technology, and real-world applications.
For my postdoctoral research (Poeppel Lab, Psychology Department, New York University, US), I investigated the behavioral and neural mechanisms of meaning composition in novel words, novel compounds, negated phrases, and music excerpts.
For my PhD research (CCN Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Birmingham, UK), I investigated the interplay between spatial attention and expectation and its influence on multisensory brain and behavioral processes.
I am also interested in the intersection between science, art and society. I am currently a Resident Scholar at the SAi Collective, where I research and facilitate connections between artists and scientists.
Methodologies: quantitative and qualitative methods, clinical assessments, psychophysics, eye-tracking, M/EEG, fMRI, TMS/tES
Latest funded projects
In 2025, I was awarded a Wellcome Global Learning Network pilot grant to advance methodological guidance on qualitative longitudinal mental health data.
In 2024, I was awarded a Civic Science Media Lab grant to investigate the formats, goals, advantages, and barriers in the partnership between scientists and artists.
In 2022, I was awarded an NYU Marl Seed award and a Diversity Innovation grant to study music semantics and explore the relationship between soundtrack music and audio-description in sighted, low vision, and blind individuals.
In 2020, I was awarded a Leon Levy Fellowship to study morpho-syntactic and semantic representations of novel words and the behavioral and neural dynamics of negation.
Selected Publications
2025. Zuanazzi A., Milham M., Kiar G., How Data Science Competitions Accelerate Brain Health Discovery. https://osf.io/cnzjw_v3
2025. Groves K., Muindi F., Zuanazzi A., Examining science and art collaborations through a social psychology lens reveals the need for Third Spaces. https://osf.io/4xbkj_v3
2025. Groves K., Farbood M., Carone B., Ripolles P.*, Zuanazzi A.*, Acoustic features of instrumental movie soundtracks elicit distinct and mostly non-overlapping extra-musical meanings in the mind of the listener. Scientific Reports.
2024. Zuanazzi A., Ripolles P., Lin W.M., Gwilliams L., King J.-R.*, Poeppel D.*, Negation mitigates rather than inverts the neural representations of adjectives. PLOS Biology.
2023. Chen P., Poeppel D.*, Zuanazzi A.*, Meaning creation in novel noun-noun compounds: humans and language models. Journal of Language, Cognition and Neuroscience.
2020. Zuanazzi A., Noppeney U. Modality-specific and multisensory mechanisms of spatial attention and expectation. Journal of Vision.
2020. Zuanazzi A., Noppeney U. The intricate interplay of spatial attention and expectation: a multisensory perspective. Multisensory Research.
2019. Zuanazzi A., Noppeney U. Distinct neural mechanisms of spatial attention and expectation guide perceptual inference in a multisensory world. The Journal of Neuroscience.
2018. Zuanazzi A., Noppeney U. Additive and interactive effects of spatial attention and expectation on perceptual decisions. Scientific Reports.
2017. Zuanazzi A., Cattaneo L. The right hemisphere is independent from the left hemisphere in allocating visuospatial attention. Neuropsychologia.
2015. Finocchiaro C., Capasso R., Cattaneo L., Zuanazzi A., Miceli G. Thematic role assignment in the posterior parietal cortex: A TMS study. Neuropsychologia.