Ricerc@Sapienza

Dr. Toppi’s research interests include the development and implementation of new approaches for high resolution EEG signal processing, with a special focus on brain mapping and brain connectivity in healthy and pathological (stroke, multiple sclerosis, disorders of consciousness) individuals.

1. Brain mapping
She contributed to the development of the following methodologies: i) adaptation of the current algorithms for the analysis of event-related potentials in healthy subjects to the non-idealities of data from patients with disorders of consciousness and ii) source localization approaches aiming at increasing the low spatial resolution of EEG technique and thus identifying brain areas acting as sources in the recorded neuroelectrical activity. Such methods have been then applied to healthy subject with the aim to investigate brain activities associated to imagination, to face perception and to economic decision making.

2. Brain connectivity
She focused on the development of methodologies for stationary and time-varying connectivity estimation and their related statistical assessment against chance. Such approaches have been used to reconstruct the brain circuits at the basis of resting brain as well as during active cognitive processes. In social neuroscience field, within Prof. Astolfi’s group, she was pioneer in the analysis of brain-to-brain connectivity estimated from hyperscanning EEG acquired (simultaneously) from interacting subjects. Moreover, she employed graph theory indices for quantifying brain networks measures and thus extracting indices to be used as outcome measures in cognitive/motor rehabilitation treatments based on Brain Computer Interface after stroke.