+39 010 353 6550 (lab)
+39 010 353 6487 (room)
+39 010 353 2154
sangui@dist.unige.it
My research interests
My main area of interest is neural control of movement. More specifically, I am trying to understand (i) how the brain can acquire and store `maps' of sensory and motor information, and how these maps are used to compute the commands for the muscle system which correspond to the intended movement; and (ii) how and to what extent the non-linear properties of muscles can make life simple for the central nervous system. Most of my research is done in collaboration with Pietro Morasso. In collaboration with David Ostry and Rafael Laboissière , I have also applied some of these ideas to orofacial control .
More recently, I have been working on the cellular
aspects of sensorimotor learning, i.e. synaptic plasticity, in the brainstem
of young lampreys (a primitive vertebrate). This work is an ongoing collaboration
with
Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi and Simon Alford
.To this purpose, we have developed a new experimental setup which is based
on providing the lamprey neural preparation with an external body (a small
mobile robot). We believe embodied electrophysiological experiments may
provide insights on how synapses dynamically change their properties (through
their short-term and long-term plasticity) while animals perform behavioral
tasks.
Some recent publications
V. Sanguneti, PG Morasso, L. Baratto, G. Brichetto, GL Mancardi, C. Solaro. Cerebellar ataxia: Quantitative assessment and cybernetic interpretation. Human Movement Science, in press.
T. Tsuji, Y. Tanaka, P. G. Morasso, V. Sanguineti and M. Kaneko. Bio-Mimetic Trajectory Generation of Robots via Artificial Potential Field with Time Base Generator. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, in press.
P.G. Morasso and V. Sanguineti. Ankle muscle stiffness cannot stabilize balance during quiet standing. Journal of Neurophysiology 88(4): 2157-2162, 2002.
B.D. Reger, K.M. Fleming, V. Sanguineti, S. Alford, and F.A. Mussa-Ivaldi. Connecting Brains to Robots: An Artificial Body for Studying the Computational Properties of Neural Tissues. Artificial Life, 6(4): 307–324, 2000.
Gribble, P. L. and Ostry, D. J. and Sanguineti, V. and Laboissière, R., Are Complex Computations Required for the Control of Arm Movement? Journal of Neurophysiology , 79(3):1409-1424, 1998. [abstract]
Morasso, P. and Sanguineti, V. and Frisone, F. and Perico, L., Coordinate-free sensorimotor processing: Computing with population codes. Neural Networks, 11:1417-1428, 1998.
Sanguineti, V. and Laboissière, R. and Ostry, D. J., A Dynamic Biomechanical Model for Neural Control of Speech Production. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 103(3):1615-1627, 1998.
V. Sanguineti, R. Laboissière, and Y. Payan. A control model of human tongue movements in speech. Biological Cybernetics, 77(1):11-22, 1997.
P. Morasso and V. Sanguineti, editors. Self-Organization, Computational Maps and Motor Control . Elsevier, 1997.
Click here
for a complete list of my publications
Teaching 
2005-2006
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Last modified: Tue Mar 20 13:59:17 MET 2001