dpb | projects

MILLE Project

Developing a Companion App for Parents, from Pregnancy to the First Thousand Days

dpb lab coordinators | Livio Provenzi

2025-2026

Research questions | How can we translate our knowledge about development and early infant-parent interactions into a reliable companion app to support parenting and to nurture the parentome - the place where development ?

Synopsis | We co-design, develop, deploy and test an app for both Android and Apple ecosystems to feature a series of functionality: from monitoring development together with parents to support them with tailored support remotely, using both chat-based and video-based tools.

Funding | Fondazione Banca del Monte di Lombardia, Welcomed

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?

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.

Funding | Italian Ministry of Health

HIPPOS Project

Hidden Insights into Pretend Play: an Observational Study

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?

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.

Funding | Italian Ministry of Health

SEA URCHIN Project

Scanning the Environmental Acoustics to Unveil Roots of Communication in Human Interactions with Newborns

dpb lab coordinator | Alessandra Provera

2025-2026

gEcho Study Collection

Generation Echo Study Collection

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?

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.

Funding | Italian Ministry of Health, Region Emilia Romagna, ScuolAttiva Onlus, Triple Pact

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

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?

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.

Funding | Italian Ministry of Health (GR-2021: Dr. Livio Provenzi)

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?

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.

Funding | Italian Ministry of Health

ARIEL Project

Autonomic Regulation through Interactions in Early Life

dpb lab coordinators | Sarah Nazzari

SPHERE Project

Supporting Parenting at Home: Empowering Rehabilitation Engagement

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?

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.

Funding | Italian Ministry of Health (Starting Grant 2019: Dr. Serena Grumi)

2021-2025