Maria Filippetti PhD

Maria Laura Filippetti, Ph.D., completed her undergraduate and master's degrees in Developmental and Educational Psychology at the University of Padua, in Italy. During her studies, she did an internship at a rehabilitation center in Osimo (AN), Italy, where she worked on early intervention with babies and toddlers with developmental disabilities. She also spent 6 months at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at Kings College London as an intern, where she gained experience in data analysis of MRI and wrote her master's dissertation on hippocampal alterations in adolescents born very preterm.

Maria Laura completed her Ph.D. ( Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher Fellowship) at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck College London, under the supervision of Prof Mark H. Johnson. Here she investigated the developmental origins and neural mechanisms involved in body perception in newborns and infants. As a Ph.D. student, she became proficient with functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) and behavioral measures with infants.

Her first post-doctoral position (Royal Holloway University of London) focussed on the interaction between interoceptive and exteroceptive body-related signals in the development and updating of body awareness in infants and adults. For her studies, she used a variety of psychophysiology recordings (HR, SCR, Eye Tracker), as well as transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS).