Luciano Fadiga

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Luciano Fadiga is a neurophysiologist at the Human Physiology department of the University of Ferrara, Italy.

Interested in the study of the motor system, he studied the organization of the ventral premotor cortex (peripersonal space, reaching-grasping) in the macaque monkey. After discovering mirror neurons in monkey area F5, he demonstrated by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) that a similar system exists also in humans. Then he moved to the investigation of the mechanisms allowing action/speech understanding and to the study of the representation of actions in Broca's area. He is one of the few neurophysiologists in the world performing single neuron recordings in awake neurosurgery patients to functionally characterize the border of some brain tumors.

Currently involved in RobotCub, CONTACT, and Poeticon EU projects, he is interacting with roboticians in order to perform experiments on artefacts that would never be possible in living subjects.

Within EU-IST, he is a strong supporter of the emerging cultural domain which is neurorobotics.

He has published 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals through the end of 2007. His work has received more than 3000 citations.