developmental psychobiology lab
IRCCS Mondino Foundation & University of Pavia
Lab director | Livio Provenzi
UMBRELLA Project
Understanding Mother-Baby Regulatory Exchanges from the Landscape to Longitudinal Adjustments
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dpb lab coordinators | Sarah Nazzari, Alessandra Raspanti​​​
2025-2026
Research questions | How prenatal emerging co-regulatory processes between expecting women and their fetuses prepare the dyad for post-natal dyadic dance? Which mechanisms link intertactive rhythms that we can observe before and after birth?​​
Synopsis | We explore how prenatal interactive rhythms at the level of autonomic and physiological regulation develop and associate with postnatal dyadic oscillations in behavioral, neurophysiological and affective co-regulation processes - both in typical and at-risk development.​
Funding | Italian Ministry of Health
Research questions | While it is generally well knwon that symbolic play emerges toward the end of the second year of life, how environmental factors (e.g., maternal sensitivity and mind-mindedness) and physiological regulation of emotional states (e.g., heart-rate variability) affect its emergence?​
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Synopsis | We explore how parental behavioral, cognitive and affective dimensions of interactive sensitivity and mind-mindedness jointly associate with infants' heart rate variability and regulation of the autonomic nervous system in shaping the emergence of symbolic play in full-term and at-risk children.
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Funding | Italian Ministry of Health
HIPPOS Project
Hidden Insights into Pretend Play: an Observational Study
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dpb lab coordinator | Alessandra Raspanti​​​
2025-2026
Research questions | While common approaches to the study of early parent-infant interactions have usually relied on visual measures and indexes of face-to-face exchanges, we wonder: What is the role of acoustic elements to shape infant relational meanging-making processes? How processed acoustic inputs from the physical and social environment contribute to emotional and cognitive development of infants with typical and less typical developmental conditions?
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Synopsis | We explore different features of the acoustic environment the sorrounds first-year and second-year infants and how they relate and associate with different dimensions of emotional and cognitive development - including stress regulation, socio-cognitive precursors, and language outcomes.
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Funding | Italian Ministry of Health
SEA URCHIN Project
Scanning the Environmental Acoustics to Unveil Roots of Communication in Human Interactions with Newborns
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dpb lab coordinator | Alessandra Provera​​​
2025-2026
GEN-e Study Collection
Generation Echo Study Collection
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dpb lab coordinator | Livio Provenzi, Sarah Nazzari​​​
2024-2027
Research questions | How does climate change challenges and environmental threats affect development, well-being and mental health of children? How parents and children cope with environmental challenges and which protective and buffering factors can we identify to care for next generation prosperity from a one-health integrated perspective on development?
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Synopsis | We explore biomarkers of exposure to pollution, environmental and natural disasters and protective connectedness to nature and greeness. We also explore individual differences in environmental-related anxiety (echo-anxiety) and resilience. The study makes an integrated use of techniques and methodologies from psychology, echology, social sciences, neurosciences, and ingeneering.
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Funding | Italian Ministry of Health, Region Emilia Romagna, ScuolAttiva Onlus, Triple Pact
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This study is a collage of multiple research projects, partly in collaboration with Prof. Serena Barello, University of Pavia (Italy).
2-BRAINED Project
2-Brain Regulation to Achieve Improved Neuroprotection during Early Development
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dpb lab coordinator | Livio Provenzi​​​
2023-2026
Research question | How do parents and infants synchronize their brains? What happens to brain-to-brain synchrony when developmental risk conditions (e.g., preterm birth) are present? Is an early parenting intervention capable of protect synchrony in at-risk conditions?
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Synopsis | This study integrates video-feedback intervention and EEG hyperscanning technique to the study of parent-infant interaction to investigate how the brain of parents and infants couple together and resonate during face-to-face interactions in full-term and preterm infants.
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Funding | Italian Ministry of Health (GR-2021: Dr. Livio Provenzi)
HEADCAM Project
How Exploration and Attention Dynamics allow Communication to Arise from Manipulation
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dpb lab coordinators | Elena Capelli, Alessandra Raspanti​​​
2022-2025
Research question | Is infants' visual and manual exploration of the physical world linked with their language and communicative skills? Does parenting environment contribute to the embedding of exploration into communication development?
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Synopsis | The use of head-mounted cameras while studying parent-infant interaction will allow us to explore how dyadic visual and manual exploration of known and unknown objects at 18 months facilitates the emergence of language skills at 24 months in full-term and preterm children.
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Funding | Italian Ministry of Health
ARIEL Project
Autonomic Regulation through Interactions in Early Life
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dpb lab coordinators | Sarah Nazzari​​​
2022-2025
Research question | How do infants and their caregiver co-regulate their body temperature during face-to-face interactive exchanges? How is this physiological co-regulation affected by technoference - as the use of smartphone by the caregiver during the interaction?
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Synopsis | By using plug-in thermocameras we will record technoferenced mother-infant interactions obtaining synchronous layers of behavioral and physiological co-regulation and we will explore how the use of a smartphone by the caregiver affects such dyadic regulatory processes.
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Funding | Italian Ministry of Health
SPHERE Project
Supporting Parenting at Home: Empowering Rehabilitation Engagement
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dpb lab coordinators | Serena Grumi​​​
Research question | Can we support parents of children with developmental risk or disabilities by engaging them in remote video-feedback supportive interventions?
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Synopsis | Video-feedback support for parents is effective to promote parental well-being, caregiving skills, and child development. Nonetheless, the resources needed for extensive video-feedback programs in hospitals or at home are huge and not all families can afford it. The SPHERE projects is a clinical trial on the effectiveness of a video-feedback intervention delivered online to parents of children with developmental risk or disability conditions.
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Funding | Italian Ministry of Health (Starting Grant 2019: Dr. Serena Grumi)
2021-2025
ULISSE Project
Understanding Low-vision Infants' Socio-cognitive Skills Emergence
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dpb lab coordinators | Elena Capelli​​​
Research question | How do socio-cognitive skills emerge in low-vision infants who lack access to key visual hints on others' intentionality?
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Synopsis | Many of the early precursors of social cognition - e.g., pointing, social referencing, anticipation of others' intentions - strongly rely on visual cues. What happens in infants who present severe low-vision conditions? In this study, we test early socio-cognitive abilities using a remote auditory interactive task of parent-infant interaction.
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Funding | Italian Ministry of Health
2021-2024
MOM-COPE Project
Measuring the Outcomes of Maternal COVID-19-related Prenatal Exposure
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dpb lab coordinators | Livio Provenzi, Serena Grumi​​​
Research question | How is maternal prenatal stress experienced by women during the COVID-19 pandemic affecting their psychological well-being and the developmental trajectories of their infants?
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Synopsis | A network of 10 neonatology units from Northern Italy is involved in this multicentric and longitudinal study. We follow up mothers and infants from birth to 12 months for emotional, social, and cognitive developmental outcomes. Moreover, we explore the role of epigenetic regulation of specific stress-related target genes in mediating the association between pandemic-related stress and both maternal and infants outcomes.
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Funding | Italian Ministry of Health; Fondazione Roche Italia
2020-2024
MEET Project
Measuring the Outcomes of Maternal COVID-19-related Prenatal Exposure
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dpb lab coordinators | Elena Capelli​​​
Research question | How does the presence of children's visual impairment affect the quality of early interaction with the caregiver and parental capacity to read and make sense of their children's communicative signals?
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Synopsis | We explore whether (and how) the presence of child visual impairment affects the way mothers behave during face-to-face interactions. We take further advantage of eye-tracking techniques, in order to focus on maternal visual exploration of their children's communicative signals and emotional cues..
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Funding | Italian Ministry of Health
2020-2023