Piergiorgio Salvan

Piergiorgio is a post-doctoral researcher working in Prof Heidi Johansen-Berg’s Plasticity lab.

His research focuses on the Fit-to-Study Brain imaging sub-study: a year-long physical activity intervention in children aimed at improving cognitive abilities of those from disadvantaged households.  He combines machine-learning approaches with multi-modal and quantitative MRI to better understand the biological processes underlying healthy brain plasticity.

Piergiorgio is also interested in brain mechanisms of reorganisation. An important, basic question in neurosciences is how modifications in local neural activity may affect whole-brain dynamics and network-level communication. Studying these mechanisms, and how they can go wrong, may help us better understand the computation underlying learning and recovery.  Applying a range of (non-invasive/invasive) neurostimulation tools together with computational approaches and animal models, can provide novel, causal insight into these mechanisms.

Piergiorgio obtained his PhD at King’s College London (Feb 2017) for his work on the ontogeny of the human language brain network.