3rd Year

Santa Lucia - Neurosciences and Rehabilitation Sapienza University of Rome

The laboratory works thanks to the effort of its members that daily put professionality and passion in their research activity

Naomi Bevacqua

Naomi Bevacqua

I graduated from the University of Bologna with a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master’s degree in neuroscience. During my post-graduate internship, I improved my technical skills using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) on the motor system, collecting data on the premotor-motor connectivity's plasticity in young and older populations (Turrini, Bevacqua et al., 2023a; 2023b). I am currently completing my PhD in Psychology and Social Neuroscience at the University of Rome La Sapienza; I'm primarily investigating the role of the frontoparietal areas in mirror phenomena with different protocols of TMS. During my first year of PhD, I collected and published physiological and behavioural data on the functional connectivity between the supplementary motor area (SMA), ventral premotor cortex (PMv), and the primary motor cortex (M1). Using cortico-cortical paired associative stimulation (ccPAS), we highlight different physiological mechanisms and different roles in the automatic imitation of the dorsal and ventral premotor-motor pathways (Bevacqua et al., 2024; Turrini, Fiori, Bevacqua et al., 2024). Currently, I carried out an online event-related interfering TMS experiment to study the role of frontal (PMv and SMA) and parietal (IPL and SPL) areas in automatic and voluntary imitation. At the same time, I began to work on a systematic review of publications that employed stimulation approaches to investigate the imitation function. In a comprehensive review, we want to illustrate the distinct functions of the areas that are part of the Action Observation Network and show that stimulation techniques can be a powerful tool for cognitive neuroscience since they can provide causal evidence.

Additional Info

  • e-mail:

This website uses technical cookies and third party cookies. By closing this banner, scrolling this page or by clicking any of its elements you consent to the use of cookies. If you want to know more or refuse consent to all or some cookies, please see the Cookie Policy. TRADUCI IN ITALIANO