Francesco Grassi
Francesco studied Biotechnology (B.Sc.) and Neurobiology (M.Sc.) at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. In his Master’s Thesis he investigated the role of basal ganglia in the temporal dynamics of spatial learning and memory, especially through psychopharmacological manipulations on murine models. After his graduation, he spent one year as research assistant at the department of Psychology at Sapienza, working on new approaches for the study of navigational abilities in humans.
Since October 2018 he has worked at the department of Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology at the University of Göttingen. His PhD thesis was part of the doctoral program Behavior and Cognition and investigated the influence of motivation on the valence of emotional stimuli.
Research interest:
- The role of low-level visual features during associative learning
- Investigating the temporal and spatial dynamics of neural mechanisms of relevance acquisition
Recent publiations:
- Grassi, F., Kulke, L., Lepauvre, A. & Schacht, A. (2024). Relevance acquisition through motivational incentives: Modeling the time-course of associative learning and the role of visual features. Imaging Neuroscience, 2, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1162/.
- Grassi, F., Semmelhack, E. A., Ruge, J. & Schacht, A. (2023). On the dynamics of gain and loss: Electrophysiological evidence from associative learning. Biological Psychology, 180, 108588.
- Demel, R., Grassi, F., Rafiee, Y., Waldmann, M. R. & Schacht, A. (2022). How German and Italian laypeople reason about distributive shortages during COVID-19. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19, 12067.