Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development
Department of Psychological Sciences
Birkbeck, University of London
London
WC1E 7HX
Phone: 020 7079 0765
Email: laura.pirazzoli at gmail.com
My PhD work focuses on understanding the mechanisms that mediate the perception of affective touch early in infancy. I am exploring this topic using different techniques, tackling with each a different angle of the main research question.
I am using functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to study how early the brain starts to discriminate between affective and non-affective touches.
I am using eye tracking and measuring heart rate to investigate if and how this discrimination happens at the physiological level.
Once I am able to isolate and describe the typical response to social touch I am interested in looking at how this is mediated by different social contexts.
Ultimately we would like to study if affective touch facilitates learning.
My supervisors are Mark Johnson, Teodora Gliga and Sarah Lloyd-Fox.
Curriculum Vitae
Education
PhD researcher, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK (January 2014- present)
Research assistant, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK (March 2014- present)
MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience, Universita’ Vita-Salute san Raffaele, Milan, Italy (2010-2013)
BS in Psychology, Universita’ Vita-Salute san Raffaele, Milan, Italy (2007-2010)
Presentations
(Presenting author)
Pirazzoli L, Lloyd-Fox S. Social brain responses in infants at risk for kcompromised development. Talk given the 20th Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, 26-28 May 2016, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Pirazzoli L, Jones E, Lloyd-Fox S, Johnson MJ, Gliga T. The effect of social touch on arousal states in early infancy. Poster presented at the 20th Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, 26-28 May 2016, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Pirazzoli L. Why is social touch important for development? Talk given at CBCD seminar on 16th February 2016.
Pirazzoli L, Jones E, Lloyd-Fox S, Johnson MJ, Gliga T. How does social touch modulate arousal states? An investigation in early development. Poster presented at the 6th annual CEU conference on Cognitive Development, 7-9 January 2016, Budapest, Hungary.
Pirazzoli L, Lloyd-Fox S, Gliga T, Johnson MJ. Discovering the neural underpinnings of social touch in infancy: a fNIRS study. Poster presented at the 3rd annual Flux Congress 17-19 September 2015, Leiden, Netherlands
Pirazzoli L, Lloyd-Fox S, Gliga T, Johnson MJ. Discovering the neural underpinnings of social touch in infancy: a fNIRS study. Poster presented at the 1st conference of the International Association for the Study of Affective Touch; 20th -22nd March 2015, UCL, London, UK.