Research Interests

object semantic representations, action semantics, perception-action-concepts relationships, conceptual development, embodied cognition, Visual Studies, apraxia, semantic deficits

My research investigates perceptual and conceptual processing of visually presented objects in children, healthy adults and brain-damaged patients. In particular, I am strongly interested in the relationship between action experience and object and action representations in the framework of embodied cognition theories. One challenge in this research area is to specify the conditions under which embodiement phenomena are observed. Using behavioral paradigms (e.g., priming, eye-tracking) as well as neuroimaging methods (e.g., fMRI, EGG) and lesion data (e.g., VLSM), the aim of my current research is to determine the role of action and context in the comprehension of visually-presented objects and in the recognition of others' actions.