My current research activity aims at investigating:
- The role of dopamine in the modulation of moral decision-making and Sense of Agency in Parkinson's disease;
- Implicit sense of agency measures as markers of prosocial decision-making;
- Neural correlates of moral decision-making;
- The effects of brain lesions on moral decision-making.
Using eye-tracking technology, we recently found that hierarchical rank influences the amount of attention individuals allocate to processing social signals, such as gaze (Ponsi, Schepisi et al., 2024 iScience).
In 2018 I was awarded a Bial Foundation Grant titled “Embodied morality: autonomic signatures of spontaneous deception in mindfulness trained practitioners”, aimed at understandig whether mindfulness practice impacts the willigness to deceive others to receive a monetary reward (Feruglio et al., 2023 Mindfulness; Feruglio et al., 2022. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience) and the associated autonomic facial markers measured by means of thermal imaging technology.
During my Ph.D. I employed thermal imaging to investigate the autonomic facial markers of emotional processing and regulation applied to the domains of intergroup social categorization (Ponsi et al., 2017. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences), social exclusion/inclusion (Ponsi et al., 2019. Journal of Neurophysiology) and cognitive workload (Panasiti, Ponsi et al., 2019. Experimental Brain Research).
In early research experiences I investigated intertemporal choice (De Petrillo et al., 2015a. Animal Cognition) and gambling (De Petrillo et al., 2015b. Animal Cogniton) in non-human primates (Capuchin monkeys, Sapajus spp.)