Speakers

IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca

After obtaining a Master’s degree in Neurobiology from La Sapienza University of Rome, I completed a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at Aix-Marseille Université, where I investigated the neural mechanisms underlying goal-directed behavior. I have expertise in electrophysiological data analysis and source reconstruction, and I am currently a research collaborator at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, working in the sleep laboratory of Giulio Bernardi.

IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca

Dr. Giulio Bernardi is an Associate Professor in General Psychology. Before becoming head of the Sleep, Plasticity, and Conscious Experience (SPACE) research group at IMT School, he had research positions at the Center for Sleep and Consciousness of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Center for Investigation and Research on Sleep at Lausanne University Hospital. Dr. Bernardi’s primary research focus concerns the local regulation of sleep and its implications for experience-dependent brain plasticity, cognition, and subjective conscious experience during both wakefulness and sleep.

IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca

Giorgia Bontempi is a Ph.D. student at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, working in the Sleep, Plasticity, and Conscious Experience (SPACE) Group. With a background in Linguistics, she explores dreaming in clinical populations, especially REM sleep behavior disorder, through natural language processing approaches.

IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca

Davide Bottari is an Assistant Professor at the IMT School. His research interests focus on the organization, functioning, and plasticity of the brain throughout the lifespan. The research he conducts is at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, and psychobiology, carried out through the application of multiple methods, including electrical neuroimaging (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), psychophysics, machine learning approaches, and computational neuroscience.

University of Wisconsin-Madison

As a cognitive neuroscientist and philosopher, Benedetta’s multidisciplinary research focuses on uncovering the neural underpinnings of sensory disconnection – defined as a state of consciousness devoid of environmental perception. Her work leverages neuroimaging techniques, such as EEG and fMRI, alongside phenomenological sampling during sleep and sedation to investigate the complex relationship between brain activity and the subjective experience of the world.

University of Padua

Nicola Cellini is an Associate Professor of psychophysiology at the University of Padova, where he leads the Sleep Psychophysiology lab (SleePy). His research focuses on the role of sleep in cognitive and emotional processing in healthy and clinical populations, as well as on autonomic regulation and wearable physiological assessment. Moreover, he is interested in techniques to modulate memory-related sleep physiology non-invasively 

University of L'Aquila

Aurora D’Atri is Associate Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience and a senior member of the Laboratory of Sleep Psychophysiology and Cognitive Neurosciences at the University of L’Aquila. Her main research interests include the application of non-invasive brain stimulation techniques to modulate EEG activity, sleepiness, and sleep patterns and the assessment of their effects on cognitive, emotional and behavioral functioning; investigation on the relationship between REM sleep features and daytime emotions; EEG alterations during the sleep-wake cycle in Alzheimer’s disease.

Donders Center for Medical Neuroscience

Martin Dresler has 20 years of sleep research experience, with a particular interest in the biological functions of sleep, cognitive aspects of sleep, and sleep research methodology. He leads the Donders Sleep & Memory Lab, and is Associate Professor at Radboud University Medical Center. He received training in Biological Psychology, Philosophy and Mathematics at Bochum University, did his PhD at Marburg University and the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, and performed postdoctoral research in Oxford and Stanford. 

Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition

Jean-Baptiste Eichenlaub is an Associate Professor at Université Savoie Mont Blanc (France) and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. During his PhD in France (Ruby Lab) and postdoctoral work in the UK (Blagrove Lab) and US (Cash Lab), he investigated the neural correlates of dreaming and the neurophysiological mechanisms of sleep-dependent memory consolidation. His current research focuses on REM sleep microstructure, sleep’s impact on waking cognition, and factors influencing dream recall.

IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca

Valentina Elce is a postdoctoral researcher at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy, where she works within the Sleep, Plasticity And Conscious Experience (SPACE) Group. Her research focuses on the neurocognitive mechanisms of dreaming and conscious experience during sleep. She earned her PhD in Cognitive, Computational and Social Neurosciences at IMT Lucca. With a background in neurolinguistics, Valentina brings an interdisciplinary approach to her work.

University of Bern

Daniel Erlacher is an Associate Professor at the University of Bern, where he leads the Sport and Sleep Lab. His research explores lucid dreaming, motor learning, sleep stimulation, and dream awareness. He also investigates sleep’s role in regeneration, athletic performance, physical activity, memory consolidation, and motor processes in dreams. Beyond dream engineering and induction, he serves as Editor of the International Journal of Dream Research and Guest Editor for special issues on consciousness and dreaming.

University of Pisa

San Raffaele Hospital

Andrea Galbiati is a psychologist and cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist with a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience. He is an assistant professor at  Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan, Faculty of Psychology. His research focuses on the psychophysiological and neuropsychological aspects of sleep and its disorders—such as insomnia, NREM parasomnias and REM sleep behaviour disorder—with a particular interest in the relationship between sleep disorders and neurodegeneration. He is a member of the International RBD Study Group, the European Insomnia Network, and the CBT Academy.

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

Henry Hebron is a postdoc in the Sleep and Dreams lab of Francesca Siclari. Originally trained as a chemist, before transferring to neuroscience and sleep research, his PhD studies in brain stimulation established closed-loop auditory stimulation for the modulation of alpha oscillations. Henry’s postdoctoral work explores the neurophysiological underpinnings of sensory experiences in non-REM dreaming, and brain state across the vigilance continuum.

University of Geneva

After completing a Master’s degree in Cognitive Science at the École Normale Supérieure, Dr. Legendre pursued a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Sophie Schwartz at the University of Geneva, investigating the processing of emotional signals during sleep. He then joined the lab of Prof. Giulio Bernardi at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca (Italy) for a two-year postdoctoral position, focusing on the induction and quantification of local sleep. Dr. Legendre is currently based again in Prof. Schwartz’s lab, where he studies autonomic rhythms during sleep. His research explores how brain state shapes sensory processing and examines whether autonomic signals - such as heart rate, breathing rate, and pupil size - can serve as a readout of underlying brain states.

IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca

Giada is a researcher in affective neuroscience and principal investigator of the Affective Physiology and Interoception Lab. Her work investigates how emotions are grounded in the body, focusing on interoception, psychophysiology, and sensory experience. She combines behavioral, physiological, and neuroscientific methods to explore how emotions are represented, regulated, and embodied in the brain and body.

Northwestern University

University of Freiburg

Jessica Palmieri is a neurobiologist and cognitive neuroscientist specializing in dream and memory research. After studying Biological Sciences and Neurobiology in Florence and Pavia, she completed her PhD in the Imaging Memory and Consolidation Lab at the University of Freiburg. Her work explores how waking experiences are incorporated into dreams and how this reactivation influences memory consolidation, using naturalistic learning materials to investigate links between brain activity, cognition, and sleep.

University of Bern

Emma Peters recently obtained her PhD at the University of Bern, where she investigates how the sleeping brain integrates bodily signals to shape dream experiences. Combining polysomnography, somatosensory stimulation, and virtual reality, her work explores the interface between the physical and dreamed body. She has led pioneering studies on sensory incorporation, lucid dream induction and training using immersive technologies, as well as dream communication and dream physiology.

Paris Brain Institute

Claudia Picard-Deland, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Paris Brain Institute. Her research explores the neurophenomenology of sleep and dreaming, focusing on how memories and environments shape dream content and experience. She investigates unique states of consciousness such as lucid dreaming and false awakenings, as well as the links between dreams, sleep perception, and mental health in both healthy individuals and those with sleep disorders.

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

Donders Center for Medical Neuroscience

Ali Saberi is a PhD candidate at the Donders Institute. With a background in engineering and data science, he focuses on wearable technology and big sleep data. He develops methods and tools for collecting and analyzing sleep data, integrating machine learning and data science for multimodal sleep research. He is conducting a home-based study on automated lucid dream induction using wearable EEG and a custom system for real-time sleep monitoring, experimental control, and data collection.

Sapienza University of Rome

Serena Scarpelli is the coordinator for the dreaming research line at the Laboratory of Sleep Psychophysiology at Sapienza University of Rome. Her studies on the electrophysiological correlates of dreaming are funded by various national and international organizations, allowing her to investigate EEG patterns associated with dream recall across diverse populations and age groups. Dr. Scarpelli also explores the relationship between dreaming and individual well-being, investigating dreams during the pandemic and oneiric experiences of pregnant women. Moreover, she studies parasomnias, including REM Sleep Behavior Disorder and sleep talking.

University of Zurich

University of Freiburg

Monika Schönauer is a psychologist and neuroscientist specializing in memory research. She studied psychology in Munich, completed her PhD at the Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences, and held postdoctoral positions in Tübingen and at Princeton. Since 2020, she has been Professor and Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Freiburg, where she leads the Emmy Noether Research Group “The Developing Engram.” Her research examines long-term memory formation, consolidation, reactivation during sleep, plasticity, and brain imaging.

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

Francesca Siclari earned her MD from the University of Geneva (2005) and specialized in neurology and sleep medicine at at the University Hospitals in Lausanne (CHUV) and Zürich (USZ). After postdoctoral work at the University of Wisconsin (2010–2013), she returned to Lausanne, where she co-directed the Center for Sleep Research (2018–2022). Now a group leader at NIN (since 2023), she studies the neural basis of dreaming using EEG and other methods. Her awards include SNSF Ambizione, Eccellenza, and an ERC Starting Grant.

Université Libre de Bruxelles

Peter Dániel Simor is a psychologist with a particular interest in the neuroscience of sleep, dreaming, and mind-wandering. He is a research fellow at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He investigates a diverse range of topics related to sleep and dreaming, such as the neurophysiology of paradoxical (REM) sleep, the interplay between sleep, chronotype, and mental health, the role of sleep in learning and memory, and the neurocognitive aspects of nightmares and lucid dreaming. Recently, he has investigated the potential role of mind wandering in information processing, specifically in probabilistic learning, as well as the intimate links between covert sleep states and mind wandering in both healthy and pathological conditions.

Integrative Neuroscience & Cognition Center

Başak is a postdoctoral researcher at the Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center (INCC) in Paris. Her work explores the brain dynamics of sensory information processing across different states of consciousness, including sleep. By combining behavioral, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging methods, she investigates the extent to which sensory and cognitive processing can occur during sleep, both in healthy and clinical populations, as well as in lucid dreamers.

Donders Center for Medical Neuroscience

Paul Zerr has a background in psychophysical experimental methods, BCI and EEG, and is currently working as a Postdoc at the Donders Institute Nijmegen, in sleep and dream research with a focus on sleep autoscoring, sleep wearables, big sleep data, automated at-home experiments, and writing accessible research software. He has a strong interest in epistemology, open science, and philosophy of science, and beyond that is a light artist, mountaineer, and gardener.