CURRICULUM VITAE: ANDREA FACOETTI

EXPERTISE: psychobiological basis of how short- and long-term plasticity (e.g., play) impact on neurocognitive development in infants, children and adults.

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS: basic research on the role of multisensory attentional mechanisms in typical and atypical learning and development, which have implications also for clinical models of neurodevelopmental disorders.

OUTSTANDING PUBLICATIONS: after early works on visual and auditory attention disorders in children with developmental dyslexia (Cortex 2000; JoCN 2010), my laboratory focused on causal methodologies through longitudinal (Current Biology 2012), rehabilitation (Current Biology 2013), brain stimulation (Cerebral Cortex 2014, 2022) and genetic (Psychiatric Genetic 2015) studies. Our longitudinal studies demonstrated the causal role played by early attentional orienting mechanisms (Cerebral Cortex 2016; Sci Rep 2017) controlled by the fast magnocellular-dorsal multisensory pathway. We demonstrated that also the number sense is linked to visual attention in children with developmental dyscalculia (Cognition 2010). A relevant series of studies has demonstrated that action video game training improves attentional mechanisms and reading skills in children with developmental and learning disorders (IJHCI 2023; Npj Sci Learn 2024). When combined with transcranial electrical stimulation, this treatment showed improvement also in adults with developmental dyslexia (Cerebral Cortex, under review). Recently my laboratory has studied the short-term plasticity of individual gaming sessions in which the salience network activation is crucial per cognitive enhancement (JoCE, 2022) and the critical role of rapid re-orienting system for the communicative and social development (Cerebral Cortex, 2024). These results established that the attentional control governs the mechanisms of learning in typical and atypical brain development. My studies have a large impact on government policies, in particular on innovative programs for literacy education in schools.

PUBLICATION METRICS: H-Index=37; Publications in Web of Science=114; Sum of Times Cited=4.956.

CURRENT SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES: (1) the role of attentional mechanisms in neurodevelopmental disorders; (2) the role of a specific enriched environment called action video games in typical and atypical brain development and; (3) the short-term effects of play, such as action-like, fighting and puzzle games on neurocognitive development.

RELEVANT GRANTS: 2010- national competitive grants amounting to about 660.000 AUD.

INVITED INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AND MEETINGS: I have been invited to some of the most prestigious international research centres, such as MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, Barcelona, San Sebastian, German Research Foundation & Haifa.

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