Federico Brusa PhD Student
“He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.” Immanuel Kant
Mr. Federico Brusa, PhD student at Heriot Watt University.
I started my PhD on September 2018. My research focuses on body representation, more specifically on the representation of the “less famous” lower limbs. I am at exploring behavioural as well as anatomical differences between feet and hands representation.
I obtained my Master’s degree in Psychology in 2017 at the University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy), with a dissertation exploring the effects of language proficiency and cognitive reserve on the cognitive performance. After graduation, I did my psychology internship at San Paolo Hospital in Milan (Italy) where I practiced in the field of neuropsychological assessment with HIV patient and in neurorehabilitation of patients with HAND (ERICA program). Here, I also had the opportunity to be involved in projects studying the physician-patient communication.
Due to my interest in body representation and emotional processing, I joined the Brain Stimulation Lab here in Edinburgh. Here, I hope to increase my technical and scientific skills, while surviving the dramatic Scottish weather.
E-mail: fb33@hw.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/federico-brusa-757244129/
Twitter: @BrusaFederico
Cristian Colzi
Postgraduate Visiting Research Student
My interest for psychology starts from the wish to understand human behaviour. This brought me to the University of Pavia where I obtained my bachelor degree in psychology in 2014, with a dissertation on somatoparaphrenic patients and body ownership. After my bachelor, I continued my career with a master degree, during which I focused on neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience.
I cooperated in a research project on memory and attention, where I used transcranical Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) to modulate the neural activity of healthy participants. I based my final dissertation on the results obtained with the experiments mentioned above and I graduated in 2016.
In September 2016 I was awarded with the Erasmus+ scholarship so I decided to take advantage of this opportunity joining the BEL at Heriot-Watt University. My aim is to improve my skills in brain stimulation, brain activity recording, data analyses and design of behavioural experiments.
Email: cc84@hw.ac.uk
Undergraduate Research Student (Erasmus Traineeship)
My name is Lukas Kretzschmar, I study Psychology (B.S.c) at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mayence, Germany. At the beginning of this year, I successfully completed the 5th semester and during the last six months the idea has grown to leave Mainz for a semester to complete an internship at the Brain Stimulation Laboratory here in Edinburgh.
For me as a student and hopefully as an upcoming scientist it is a great opportunity to be part of this team for many reasons. First, I am able to gain insight into a foreign Institute, working together with excellent scientists from different parts of the world. Thereby, I have the opportunity to explore modern interdisciplinary fields of research, their methods and I am provided with the unique chance to originate my own research-project. Furthermore, I can practice my English, a basic prerequisite for today’s students who pursue an academic career. Eventually becoming a Ph.D. is definitely a main goal.
All in all, I hope this will result in a more flexible thinking about generating research questions and that it will lastly inspire me to conceive new ideas concerning own research issues.
Email: lukas.kretzschmar@googlemail.com
Myrto Efstathiou PhD Student
In 2013 I joined Heriot-Watt University with the goal to obtain a Bachelor's degree in Psychology while working as a support worker for people with autism. My final year project investigated the Size-Weight Illusion in healthy participants while undergoing Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS). After graduation, I completed an internship at the BEL with Dr Anna Sedda, exploring the epidemiology of Body Integrity Identity Disorder in the United Kingdom. At the same time, I completed the Master of Science in Clinical Health Psychology at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow). I joined Heriot-Watt and BEL in September 2019 as a postgraduate research student under the supervision of Dr Anna Sedda and Dr Louise Delicato. My research explores how we perceive our bodily-self through our hands and feet and through our whole body.
Email: me56@hw.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/myrto-efstathiou-631ba541/
Twitter: @Myr_Efstathiou
Visiting Erasmus Student (Biology)
Since September 2014 I am studying Neurobiology (MSc) @ the University of Pavia (Italy). During the last year I was awarded a Erasmus Traineeship+ scholarship and I decided to join the Brain Stimulation Lab @ Heriot-Watt University. I started my Visiting period in March 2016 and I will be in Edinburgh until June 2016.
I graduated in Biology (BSc) @ Marche Polytechnic University (Ancona, Italy) in 2014. During this period, I have done an internship of 3 months in Microbiology/Molecular Biology Research Lab @ the “Ospedali Riuniti” in Ancona.
Few years ago I started focusing my interests, concentrating in how the Nervous System (NS) is composed, and how it can work in each of its complex functions. For this reason, I chose to study Neurobiology in Pavia.
During this period I understood that my aim is to apply neurophysiological knowledge to study human behaviours and how and why lesion to the NS result in a different type of disorders: the first step that I have done to make this dream come true is moving to Edinburgh.
At Heriot-Watt University I will explore body representation in healthy subjects and collect data for my final year project.
Email: eg25@hw.ac.uk
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