Interests

After my graduation in Biological Sciences at Sapienza, I joined the PhD program at International School for Advanced Studies of Trieste, Italy, in the lab directed by Prof Enrico Cherubini. In the lab, my main project focused on understanding the role of nicotinic receptor activation on intrinsic membrane properties and plasticity in hippocampal somatostatin-positive (SOM) interneurons.After the PhD in SISSA, I joined the lab of Dr Mulle at Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience, in Bordeaux where I put great effort to set in vivo recording techniques in the mouse. I started to perform patch clamp from hippocampal neurons in anesthetized mice. In the Mulle’s lab, I was trained in performing in vivo gene transfers to deliver opto-chemogenetic tools in the brain. I carried on two main projects. The first aimed to study the impact of acetylcholine release on local circuits in the medial septum in vivo, using optogenetic tools. The second study characterized for the first time the properties of mf-CA3 synapse in vivo using optogenetic tools.After the post-doctoral experience in Mulle’s Lab I went back to Italy joined Cherubini’s Lab at European Brain Research Institute in Rome, where I introduced new techniques not present in the Institute (i.e. in vivo recordings, opto-chemogenetic approaches). Here, I have been awarded with a post-doctoral fellowship by Veronesi Foundation to lead a project on the impact of cholinergic modulation on social memory encoded by CA2 hippocampal region. Preliminary data show that the inhibition of cholinergic neurons in the medial septum impairs social memory. This finding will have a strong implication in the field of neuropsychiatric disorders in which social cognition is affected.