Anna Ipata

Università degli Studi di Verona

Neurophysiology of emotional memory

2007-2008

Dr. Anna Ipata is at present an Associate Research Assistant at the Mahoney Center for Mind and Brain of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Columbia University, with an interest in the study of the neuronal basis of visual and cognitive functions in humans and primates. Her research covers the study of visual functions in children with cerebral damage and single neuron recording in alert monkeys. Dr. Ipata took her medical degree at the University of Pisa, where she also completed her residency in Child Neurology and Psychiatry. During the residency, she performed studies focused on the early diagnosis of visual disorders in children with cortical damage, using psychophysical and neurophysiological techniques. After the residency she moved to the Department of Physiology and Vision of the University of Verona for a Ph.D. program in neuroscience. In Verona she studied the neural basis of visual attention in the visual cortex of non-human primates. After completing her Ph.D., she moved to the sensoriomotor research laboratory of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, where she worked as a postdoc under the supervision of Prof. Michael Goldberg. In 2002 she moved to Columbia University with Prof. Goldberg and set up a new laboratory of neurophysiology. Since her arrival in the US, the main focus of her research has been the study of the neuronal substrates of cognitive functions in non-human primates, in particular the role of the parietal cortex in the exploration of the visual scene in monkeys.