Maria Ida Gobbini

Prof Maria Ida Gobbini studied Medicine and Surgery (summa cum laude) at the University of Florence (Italy), completed the specialty in Neurology at the University of Florence (Italy) and received her PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Pisa (Italy).

Starting in 1997, she has conducted research at the NIH (National Institute of Health), Bethesda, MD, USA, first at the NINDS (National Institute of Neurological Disorders) and then at NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) until 2002; from 2002 to 2006, at the Department of Psychology of Princeton University (Princeton, NJ, USA). Since 2009 until 2022 she has been collaborating at Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH, USA). Since 2022 she is part of the 'Piattaforma di Neuroscienze', Rete IRCCS, University of Bologna.

Her research investigates face perception, and recognition of social cues. She has conducted psychophysics and neuroimaging research to investigate the effect of learning associated with face familiarity.

A particular focus of her research is on face recognition, representation of familiar others, and the role played by retrieval of person knowledge. Her model on face perception has highlighted how learning optimizes face processing at all levels including those that precede awareness. 

Currently, one line of her research investigates individual differences in cognition, with potential clinical applications for diagnosis and treatment.

Prof Gobbini has authored over 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters (Citations: over 18000; H-index 33 from Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dL8S_HYAAAAJ&hl=en).

 

EDITORIAL ACTIVITIES

She serves as an Editorial Board Member for Scientific Reports and for Brain Sciences

She is guest editor for a special issue on face perception for Scientific Reports: https://www.nature.com/collections/dggcebjjje/how-to-submit

She was guest editor for a special issue on ‘The perception of emotion and social cues in faces’ in Neuropsychologia in 2007.

 

HIGHLIGHTS IN THE PRESS

https://www.radio24.ilsole24ore.com/home/programmi/smart-city/puntata/trasmissione-26-marzo-2024-6500-2397647929483605

https://www.rsi.ch/rete-due/programmi/cultura/il-giardino-di-albert/Uno-nessuno-centomila%E2%80%A6-volti-14962518.html?f=podcast-shows

UniBo Magazine (in Italian): “Il riconoscimento dei volti familiari si basa su un codice neurale condiviso a livello cerebrale” [https://magazine.unibo.it/archivio/2021/11/09/il-riconoscimento-dei-volti-familiari-si-basa-su-un-codice-neurale-condiviso-a-livello-cerebrale]

Dartmouth News: “How Shared Neural Codes Help Us Recognize Familiar Faces” [https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2021/11/how-shared-neural-codes-help-us-recognize-familiar-faces?page=1]

GEN News: “Brain’s Response to Familiar Faces Draws on Shared Neural Code for Visual, Social, and Semantic Processing” [https://www.genengnews.com/neuroscience/brains-response-to-familiar-faces-draws-on-shared-neural-code-for-visual-social-and-semantic-processing/]

Neuroscience News: “Recognizing Familiar Faces Relies on a Neural Code Shared Across Brains” [https://neurosciencenews.com/social-brain-face-processing-19577/]

Medical Xpress: “Recognizing familiar faces relies on a neural code shared across brains” [https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11-familiar-neural-code-brains.html]

 

RESEARCH SUPPORT THROUGH COMPETITIVE GRANTS

· R01, NIHM, NIH, USA, 2022-2026. Infrastructure for hyperaligning fMRI data and estimating functional topographies. (mPI)

· National Science Foundation (NCS-FO: 1835200), USA, 2018-2022. Individual variation in the fine-grained structure of distributed cortical systems for cognition. (PI)

 

FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS

Guarini Graduate Faculty Mentoring Award, Dartmouth College, USA, 2019 

Marco Polo, University of Bologna, Italy, Oct 1 2009- Jan 1^st 2010.

AIMS 9° Corso Residenziale di Medicina del Sonno (April 2005), Bertinoro, Italy

2005 Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

 

INVITED LECTURES 

She has been invited to present her work at national and international meetings (see below for the lectures posted on youtube) such as at the Summer School for Advanced Studies on Biometrics for Secure Authentication, Alghero, Italy; at the IBS Conference in Neroimaging Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Korea; IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Lucca, Italy; Department of Psychology at The Royal Holloway University of London, UK; School of Psychology, University of Glasgow, UK; Joint Research Conference of The Israel Institute for Advanced Studies & The Israel Science Foundation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; 1st World Congress on Facial Expression of Emotion, Porto, Portugal; 43rd. NIPS International Symposium, Okazaki, Japan.

Lectures posted on youtube:

· Dartmouth College, Hanover NH, USA (2018): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drWoUoZYyCI&t=2559s

· MGH Martinos Center, Boston, MA, USA (2019): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WrKHmFmfsw&t=228s

· UniTo (2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xDC4mDWOgI&t=71s

 

Most recent invited talks:

  - Workshop on Humans, Deep Networks & Face Recognition, March 13-14, 2023, London, UK. https://www.facialrecognition2023.org/

  - Symposium on Computational Human Behavior: The human brain and mind in natural environments, 2023 APS Annual Convention, May 25-28, 2023 Washington, DC, USA 

 - Summer School for Advanced Studies on Biometrics for Secure Authentication, Alghero, Italy, June 5-9 2023

Next invited talk at:

-ISMRM 2023 Workshop on Current Issues in Brain Function, Padoa, Italy, Sep 4-6 2023

 

PRESENTATIONS AT MEETINGS

• Feilong, M., Jiahui, G., Gobbini, M. I., & Haxby, J. V., A cortical surface template for human neuroscience. Presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Annual Meeting, March, San Francisco, CA, USA, March 25-28, 2023
• Jiahui, G., Feilong, M., Nastase, S. A., Haxby, J. V., & Gobbini, M. I., Cross-movie prediction of individualized functional topography. Presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Annual Meeting, March, San Francisco, CA, USA, March 25-28, 2023
• Han J, Nastase SA, Gobbini MI, Haxby JV. Neural Representational Geometry of Action in Naturalistic Stimuli. Presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Annual Meeting, March, San Francisco, CA, USA, March 25-28, 2023
• (Oral presentation) Feilong, M., Nastase, S. A., Jiahui, G., Halchenko, Y. O., Gobbini, M. I., & Haxby, J. V. (2022, May), Precise and generalizable cartography of functional topographies in individual brains. Presented at the Vision Sciences Society 2022 Annual Meeting, May 19-24 2022
• Jiahui, G., Feilong, M., Visconti di Oleggio Castello, M., Nastase, S. A., Haxby, J. V., & Gobbini, M. I. (2022, Jun), Not so fast: Limited validity of deep convolutional neural networks as in silico models for human naturalistic face processing. Presented at the Virtual Vision Sciences Society 2022 Annual Meeting, May 19-24 2022
• Chauhan V, Philip R, Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Jiahui G, Feilong M, Dupré la Tour Y, Haxby JV, Gobbini MI. Dynamic, naturalistic faces embedded in a narrative elicit responses in the distributed face processing system. Presented at the Virtual Vision Sciences Society 2022 Annual Meeting, May 19-24 2022
• Jiahui, G., Feilong, M., Visconti di Oleggio Castello, M., Nastase, S.A., Haxby, J.V., and Gobbini, M.I. (2022). Modeling naturalistic face processing in humans with deep convolutional neural networks. Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN), San Francisco, CA, USA, Aug 25-28, 2022
• Feilong, M., Nastase, S. A., Jiahui, G., Halchenko, Y. O., Gobbini, M. I., and Haxby, J. V. (2022). The Individualized Neural Tuning Model: Precise and generalizable cartography of functional architecture in individual brains. Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN), San Francisco, CA, USA, Aug 25-28, 2022
• Guo, J., Feilong, M., Visconti di Oleggio Castello, M., Haxby, J. V., Gobbini, M. I. (2021, Jun). Representational similarity between brain and DCNNs in high-dimensional face space. Presented at the Organization for Human Brain Mapping 2021 Annual Meeting, June 21-25, 2021
• Guo, J., Feilong, M., Visconti di Oleggio Castello, M., Guntupalli, J. S., Chauhan, V., Haxby, J. V., & Gobbini, M. I. (2020, Jun). Predicting individual face-selective topography using naturalistic stimuli. Presented at the Organization for Human Brain Mapping 2020 Annual Meeting, June 23-July 3 2020
• Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Guntupalli JS, Gobbini MI. Head-view invariant representation of identity for personally familiar and visually familiar faces. Organization of Human Brain Mapping Annual Meeting, OHBM, Singapore, June 17-21, 2018.
• Nastase SA, Philip RE, Chauhan V, Feilong M, Taylor MK, Halchenko YO, Gobbini MI, Haxby JV. Decoding the neural representation of observed social and nonsocial human actions. Organization of Human Brain Mapping Annual Meeting, OHBM, Singapore, June 17-21, 2018.
• Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Weisz N, Gobbini MI. Allocation of Attention to Personally Familiar and Stranger Faces over Time. Organization of Human Brain Mapping Annual Meeting, OHBM, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, June 25-29, 2017
• Chauhan V, Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Soltani A, Gobbini MI. Narrow boundaries for categorization of the identity of personally familiar faces. VSS –Vision Sciences Society, St Pete Beach, Florida, USA, May 19-24, 2017.
• Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Halchenko YO, Guntupalli JG, Gors J, Gobbini MI. Investigating the face processing network using MVPA. Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, CNS, San Francisco, CA, USA, March 25-28, 2017.
• Dalrymple AK, Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Elison J, Gobbini MI. The development of facial identity and expression perception. Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, VSS, St. Pete Beach, Florida, USA, May 13-18 2016.
• Wheeler KG, Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Gobbini MI. Familiarity facilitates feature-based face processing. Poster at the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, CNS, New York, NY, USA April 2016
• Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Gobbini MI. Familiar face detection in 180ms. Poster at the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, CNS, San Francisco, CA, USA, April 2015. 
• Guntupalli JS, Gobbini MI. Viewpoint-invariant face identity information in right Inferior Frontal Gyrus. Workshop on Social Perception. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA, July 31^st Aug1^st 2014
• Halchenko, Y. O., Gors, J., Guntupalli, J. S., Gobbini MI. Investigation of the familiar face recognition model. Poster at the SfN 2012 Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

 

REVIEWING ACTIVITIES

Grant reviewer for:

• ISF (Israel Science Foundation)
• ERC (European Research Council)

Ad hoc reviewer of international peer-reviewed journals such as:

Trends in Cognitive Science (TICS); Journal of Neuroscience; Cerebral Cortex; Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience; NeuroImage; Journal of Experimental Psychology: General; Neuropsychologia; Social Neuroscience; Emotion; CABN (Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioural Neuroscience); Brain Research; Psychological Science; eLIFE.

 

FIELDS OF INTEREST AND PUBLICATIONS:

1. Face Perception in Humans

This work was funded in part also by the National Science Foundation ‘Individual variation in functional brain organization’, MI Gobbini (PI)

Most significant publications:

Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Haxby JV, Gobbini MI. (2021). Shared neural codes for visual and semantic information about familiar faces in a common representational space. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (45)

 

Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Chauhan V, Jiahui G, Gobbini MI. (2020). An fMRI dataset in response to “The Grand Budapest Hotel”, a socially-rich, naturalistic movie. Scientific Data 7 (1), 1-9

 

Chauhan V, Kotlewska I, Tang S, Gobbini MI. (2020). How familiarity warps representation in the face space. Journal of Vision, 20 (7) 18.

 

Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Taylor MK, Cavanagh P, Gobbini MI. (2018) Idiosyncratic, retinotopic bias in face identification modulated by familiarity. eNeuro, pii: ENEURO.0054-18.2018. doi:10.1523/ENEURO.0054-18.2018.

 

Guntupalli JS, Gobbini MI. (2017). Reading faces: from features to recognition. Trends in Cogn Sciences. 21: 915-916

 

Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Halchenko YO, Guntupalli JS, Gors JD, Gobbini MI. (2017). The neural representation of personally familiar and unfamiliar faces in the distributed system for face perception. Sci Rep, 7:12237.

 

Guntupalli JS, Wheeler KG, Gobbini MI. (2017). Disentangling the representation of identity from head view along the human face processing pathway. Cerebral Cortex, 27:46-53.

 

Gobbini MI, Haxby JV. (2007). Neural systems for recognition of familiar faces. Neuropsychologia, 45: 32-41.

 

Haxby JV, Hoffman EA, Gobbini MI. (2000). The distributed human neural system for face perception. Trends Cogn Sci. 4(6):223-233.

 

2. Individual differences in cognitive function

This work is funded by the National Institutes of Health ‘Infrastructure for hyperaligning fMRI data and estimating functional topographies’, MI Gobbini (MPI)

Most significant publications:

Feilong M, Nastase SA, Jiahui G, Halchenko YO, Gobbini MI, Haxby JV. (2022). The Individualized Neural Tuning Model: Precise and generalizable cartography of functional architecture in individual brains [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.15.492022.abstract]. bioRxiv.

 

Jiahui G, Feilong M, Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Nastase SA, Haxby JV, Gobbini MI (2022). Not so fast: Limited validity of deep convolutional neural networks as in silico models for human naturalistic face processing [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.17.469009.abstract]. bioRxiv.

 

Jiahui G, Feilong M, Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Guntupalli JS, Chauhan V, Haxby JV, Gobbini MI. (2020). Predicting individual face-selective topography using naturalistic stimuli. NeuroImage. 216, 116458

 

Haxby JV, Guntupalli JS, Connolly AC, Halchenko YO, Conroy BR, Gobbini MI, Hanke M, Ramadge PJ. (2011). A common, high-dimensional model of the representational space in human ventral temporal cortex. Neuron. 72:404-416.

 

3. Perception of Social Actions

Most significant publications:

Haxby JV, Gobbini MI, Nastase SA. (2020). Naturalistic stimuli reveal a dominant role for agentic action in visual representation. NeuroImage, 116561

 

Nastase SA, Halchenko YO, Connolly AC, Gobbini MI, Haxby JV. (2018). Neural resposes to naturalistic clips of behaving animals in two different tasks contexts. Front Neurosci, 12, 316

 

Nastase SA, Connolly AC, Oosterhof NN, Halchenko YO, Guntupalli JS, Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Gors J, Gobbini MI, Haxby JV. (2017). Attention selectively reshapes the geometry of distributed semantic representation. Cerebral Cortex, 7:1-15.

 

Connolly A, Sha L, Guntupalli JS, Oosterhof N, Halchenko Y, Nastase S, Visconti di Oleggio Castello M, Abdi H, Jobst B, Gobbini MI, Haxby JV. (2016). How the human brain represents perceived dangerousness or “predacity” of animals”. J Neurosci, 36:5373-84.

 

Gobbini MI, Gentili C, Ricciardi E, Bellucci C, Salvini P, Laschi C, Guazzelli M, Pietrini P. (2011). Distinct neural systems involved in agency and animacy detection. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20849234] J Cogn Neurosci. 23: 1911-1920.

 

Gobbini MI, Koralek AC, Bryan RE, Montgomery KJ, Haxby JV. (2007). Two takes on the social brain: a comparison of theory of mind tasks. J Cogn Neurosci, 19, 1803-1814

 

4. Brain plasticity

Most significant publications:

Fairhall SL, Porter KB, Bellucci C, Mazzetti M, Cipolli C, Gobbini MI. (2017). Plastic reorganization of neural systems for person perception in the congenitally blind: an fMRI study on the perception of voices. NeuroImage, 158:126-135.

 

Pietrini P, Furey ML, Ricciardi E, Gobbini MI, Wu WH, Cohen L, Guazzelli M, Haxby JV. (2004). Beyond sensory images: Object-based representation in the human ventral pathway. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 101(15):5658-5663.

 

5. Studies on patients

Most significant publications:

Danti S., Ricciardi E., Gentili C., Gobbini M.I., Pietrini P., Guazzelli M. (2010). Is Social Phobia a “Mis-Communication” Disorder? Brain Functional Connectivity during Face Perception Differs between Patients with Social Phobia and Healthy Control Subjects. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. 4: 1-11.

 

Gentili C, Ricciardi E, Gobbini MI, Santarelli MF, Haxby JV, Piterini P, Guazzelli M. (2009). Beyond amygdala: Default Mode Network activity differs between patients with social phobia and healthy controls. Brain Res Bull, 79: 409-413

 

Gentili C, Gobbini MI, Ricciardi E, Vanello N, Pietrini P, Guazzelli M. (2008). Differential modulation of neural activity throughout the distributed neural system for face perception in patients with Social Phobia and healthy subjects. Brain Res Bull. 77: 286-292.

 

Leist TP, Gobbini MI, Frank JA, McFarland HF. (2001). Enhancing magnetic resonance imaging lesions and cerebral atrophy in patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis. Arch Neurol, 58(1):57-60.

 

Gobbini MI, Smith ME, Richert ND,Frank JA, McFarlandHF (1999). Effect of open label pulse cyclophosphamide therapy on MRI measures of disease activity in five patients with refractory relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. J Neuroimmunol. 99(1):142-9

 

Sorbi S, Nacmias B, Forleo P, Latorraca S, Gobbini I, Bracco L, Piacentini S, Amaducci L. (1994). ApoE allele frequencies in Italian sporadic and familial Alzheimer’s disease. Neurosci Lett. 177(1-2):100-102.

 

An ongoing project on ‘Face perception and emotion recognition in patients with surgical intervention for cleft palate’ has been funded by Fondazione CARISBO ‘“Percezione del volto e riconoscimento delle emozioni facciali nei pazienti sottoposti ad intervento di labiopalatoschisi”’, MI Gobbini (PI). This project is in collaboration with Prof. Alessia Tessari; Prof. Marco Pignatti and Dr Federico Giorgini, University of Bologna, Italy.

 

6. The nature of stigma for medical conditions

This is a very recent ongoing project that has the aim of evaluating in medical students how perception of stigma associated with specific medical conditions changes during medical school along with the acquisition of the knowledge of diseases (such as, for example, but not only, mental illness). This project is in collaboration with Dr Edita Fino, Department of Psychology ‘Renzo Canestrari’, Bologna, Italy

 

ONGOING COLLABORATIONS:

 

• Individual differences in fine-grained functional architecture and cognitive functions: Jim Haxby, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH, USA (http://haxbylab.dartmouth.edu/

 

• Perception of social actions: Sam Nastase, Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA (https://snastase.github.io/)

 

 

• Face perception and emotion recognition in patients with facial scars: Marco Pignatti, DIMES, University of Bologna, Italy; Federico Giorgini, Scuola di Specializzazione in Chirurgia Plastica, DIMES, University of Bologna, Italy; Alessia Tessari, Dipartimento di Psicologia ‘Renzo Canestrari’, University of Bologna, Italy.

 

• Stigma associated with diseases: Edita Fino, Dipartimento di Psicologia ‘Renzo Canestrari’, University of Bologna, Italy

 

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

Co-organizer of the workshop Semantic processing and semantic knowledge. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA, August 22^nd -23^rd, 2019 (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ccn/ )

Co-organizer of the workshop Multidisciplinary approaches to understanding face perception. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA, August 29^th -30^th, 2018 (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ccn/)

Co-organizer of the workshop Action understanding: from kinematics to mind, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA, August 23^rd -25^th, 2017 (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ccn/)

Co-organizer of the workshop Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Person Perception, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA, July31^st-August1^st, 2014 (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ccn/)

Co-organizer with Katia Mattarozzi, Maurizio Codispoti and Michela Mazzetti, of the workshop “Perception and Motivation”, Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy, September 14^th 2009.

Member of the Local Organizing Committee for the Organization for Human Brain Mapping meeting, Florence, Italy June 11-15 2006

Co-organizer with James Haxby, Elizabeth Hoffman and Emmeline Edwards of the symposium “About faces: a multidisciplinary approach to the science of face perception”. Princeton University, September 19-21 2003.