Mindfulness meditation is a type of mental training that involves conscious effort to control attention on a target (usually physical sensations related to breathing), simultaneously monitoring and letting go of the thought that wanders and the drift of attention. In this line of research, we investigate how such mental training affects not only the regulation of attention, but also the regulation of emotion and sense of self, both in adults and in children.

Executive control refers to the ability of the human brain - mostly associated with the activity of the prefrontal cortex - to regulate attention in performing new or complex tasks.

Previous studies and models of human cognition have assumed that executive control necessarily requires conscious processing of information.

This perspective is in line with common sense and introspection, which suggest that our choices are intentional and based on conscious stimuli. Nonetheless, we and other researchers have shown how executive control can involve or be triggered by the unconscious processing of information, with consequent effects on observed behaviors.

The interaction between brain networks for controlled attention (executive networks) and mental wandering (default-mode networks) plays a key role in regulating these different degrees of consciousness.

In this line of research, we study brain dynamics during the spontaneous orientation of attention and the so-called "attentional disengagement". Automatic focus orientation is an indicator of the saliency of a stimulus. On the contrary, a lack of automatic attention orientation indicates a lack of attentive stimulus salience for the specific individual. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies show that a lack of automatic attentional orientation during resting state can be measured and identified as a lack of deactivation of the so-called default-mode network in the brain.

This network is, however, very active during the resting state phase, and is correlated with a mental state of free association (mind-wandering) and disengagement (detachment) from external sensory stimuli. When an individual's attention is selectively active towards an external sensory stimulation, the default-mode network is deactivated.

Therefore, its lack of deactivation is a good indicator of lack of automatic selective focus.

We have used this mechanism to a variety of psychological phenomena. In particular, in one set of experiments we analyze the triggering of attention in adults who are exposed to infant auditory stimuli, and we found significant gender differences. In another project we investigate brain activity participants diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in response to socially-sounded auditory stimuli.

The basic hypothesis is that in subjects with DSA some of these auditory stimuli indicate a different activation pattern in the default-mode network than a control group with typical development.

Being creative, roughly definable as the process of generating things which are new and good, is a special ability. In this line of research, we investigated the neural bases of the creative process in artistic and non-artistic settings. In general, we support the idea that creativity would influence the functional connectivity between regions involved in the default mode network, implicated in divergent thinking and generating novel ideas, and the executive control network, implicated in controlling attention and evaluating ideas. In a first project, we found stronger connectivity between areas of these two networks during creative tasks involving the visual arts, and this difference was enhanced in professional artists. In another study we are exploring the brain correlates (white and grey matter) in individuals with different degrees of entrepreneurial attitudes (thus a non-artistic form of creativity).

In this line of research, we investigate the link between the propensity to distraction and the control of attention while executing complex tasks in the workplace that require a continuous focus of attention, especially under stressful conditions. Several studies in cognitive ergonomics are showing how individual variability, emotional regulation, interpersonal competence within the working team and digital technologies adopted are all key factors to predict attentional performance in the workplace, and how these processes are linked to individual wellbeing. In a large project we are investigating how such variables can affect work performance and wellbeing in operators in retirement homes, and if and how they influence cognitive, emotional and relational variables in elderly guests and their family.