Maurizio Corbetta

• 

  How the brain’s structural and functional organization mediate behaviour, both in healthy subjects, and patients with neurological disorders.

  The brain remains one of the major frontiers in science. The main focus of our research is to understand how different regions in the brain interact and exchange information to mediate behavior in health and neurological disorders. We are studying the functional organization of the brain, and how this organization supports cognitive function using advanced neuroimaging methods (fMRI, DTI, EEG/MEG, PET). We are also interested in understanding how focal lesions like stroke or tumors impact the large-scale organization of brain systems, and how modulation of these alterations may improve function.

  Background

  Research

  Group Members

  Key Publications

  The main focus of our research is to understand how different regions in the brain interact and exchange information to mediate behavior in health and neurological disorders. Our laboratory focuses on three main topics: Attention Networks; Electrophysiology and Function of Intrinsic Activity; and, Neurological Mechanisms of Recovery.

  Research Lines

  Cognitive functions and brain networks. Our laboratory has been traditionally involved in clarifying brain mechanisms of attention. Attention reflects the ability to select a few behaviorally relevant information among many other potentially distracting and irrelevant information. We have discovered two networks in the brain: the dorsal and ventral fronto-parietal attention networks that interact during normal perception

  

  Attention networks from Corbetta & Shulman, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2002.

  (https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn755)(Fig.1). The dorsal network interacts with sensory-motor regions to enhance stimuli and responses that match ongoing goals. The ventral network detects novel and important stimuli in the environment to re-direct the focus of processing to stimuli outside of the current focus of interest (http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(08)00369-3). In patients with lesions alterations of the synchronization of these two networks lead to the most common cognitive deficit after right hemisphere damage: spatial neglect (http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-neuro-061010-113731?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub=pubmed&). Current work is directed at understanding the electrophysiological bases of these signals (http://www.pnas.org/content/110/48/19585.abstract).

  Brain intrinsic activity and its function. The coordination among brain regions requires among other things an interaction between ongoing patterns of intrinsic activity and activity driven by tasks. One of the most important discoveries in the last 10 years in systems neuroscience is that the brain is never at rest, and that this intrinsic activity consumes the majority of the energy budget. The brain contains 10¹² neurons and each neuron is connected approximately with 10⁴ other neurons leading to an estimate of about 10¹⁶ synapses in the brain.  Interestingly, only about 1 million axons enter the brain from the retina, and about only 1 million axons exit the brain toward the spinal cord to control movement.  Hence, the majority of brain activity is intrinsic, not sensory or motor-driven. Functional fMRI studies from ours and other labs have shown that intrinsic activity is organized in a finite number of brain networks that are synchronized at rest, but combined in different motifs during behavior (http://www.pnas.org/content/102/27/9673.full;https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05758

  
  Learning sculpts intrinsic brain activity from Lewis et al. PNAS 2009.

  We are currently investigating the neurophysiological basis of intrinsic activity (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811917300629?via%3Dihub), its modification with learning (http://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17558.long)(Fig.2), relationship to task performance and behavioral significance (http://www.pnas.org/content/112/26/8112.abstract).

  Neurological mechanisms of injury. Finally, networks of intrinsic or task-driven activity are disrupted by focal brain injuries (stroke, traumatic brain injury, tumors).

  
  Network view of functional connectivity abnormalities of different behavioral deficits, from Siegel et al. PNAS 2016

  Our lab has been one of the first ones to show that behavioral deficits depend on the physiological disruption of brain regions/networks that are not directly damaged (http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(07)00112-2).  Recent work shows that stroke at the population level cause a small number of behavioral clusters (http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(15)00142-7), and that these correspond physiologically to a small number of network wide abnormalities (http://www.pnas.org/content/113/30/E4367). These studies identify patterns of activity that are potentially treatable through a variety of different approaches (rehabilitation,  stimulation, brain-computer interface) to improve function.

  

  Marta Bisio

  Postdoc

  marta.bisio@unipd.it

  

  Andrea Zangrossi

  Postdoc

  andrea.zangrossi@unipd.it

  

  Chiara Favaretto

  Postdoc - Engineering

  chiara.favaretto.2@studenti.unipd.it.

  

  Loren Koçillari

  PhD Student

  lorenkocillari@gmail.com

  

  Rodrigo Pereira Rocha

  Postdoc - Fisica

  rodrigo.rocha@ufsc.br

  

  Alessandro Palombit

  PhD Student

  alessandro.paolombit@unipd.it

  

  Elena Monai

  MD - Resident neurology

  elena.monai@unipd.it

  

  Lorenzo Pini

  Titolo

  Mail

  

  Miriam Celli

  Titolo

  Mail

  

  Tommaso Volpi

  Titolo

  Mail

  

  Zhang Lu

  Titolo

  Mail

  

  Yanjun Liu

  Titolo

  Mail

  

  Mohammed Hadi Arabi

  Titolo

  Mail

  

  Alessandro Salvalaggio

  MD - Resident neurology

  alessandro.salvalaggio@unipd.it

   

  Collaborators  

  • Alessandra Bertoldo, PhD
  • Diego Cecchin, MD
  • Stefano Vassanelli, PhD
  • Samir Suweiss, PhD
  • Amos Maritan, PhD
  • Angelo Ceedese, PhD
  • Giorgia Cona, PhD

  1. Griffis JC, Metcalf NV, Corbetta M, Shulman GL. Damage to the shortest structural paths between brain regions is associated with disruptions of resting-state functional connectivity after stroke. Neuroimage. 2020 Apr 15;210:116589.
  2. Salvalaggio A, Cagnin A, Marson P, Ferracci F, Cortelli P, Corbetta M, Briani C. Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome associated with Guillain-Barré syndrome: Case report and clinical management considerations. J Clin Apher. 2020 Apr 14
  3. Prando G, Zorzi M, Bertoldo A, Corbetta M, Zorzi M, Chiuso A. Sparse DCM for whole-brain effective connectivity from resting-state fMRI data. Neuroimage. 2020 Mar
  4. Arbula S, Ambrosini E, Della Puppa A, De Pellegrin S, Anglani M, Denaro L, Piccione F, D'Avella D, Semenza C, Corbetta M, Vallesi A. Focal left prefrontal lesions and cognitive impairment: A multivariate lesion-symptom mapping approach. Neuropsychologia. 2020 Jan; 136:107253
  5. Padmanabhan JL, Cooke D, Joutsa J, Siddiqi SH, Ferguson M, Darby RR, Soussand L, Horn A, Kim NY, Voss JL, Naidech AM, Brodtmann A, Egorova N, Gozzi S, Phan TG, Corbetta M, Grafman J, Fox MD. A Human Depression Circuit Derived From Focal Brain Lesions. Biol Psychiatry. 2019 Nov 15 ;86(10):749-758
  6. Suweis S, Tu C, Rocha RP, Zampieri S, Zorzi M, Corbetta M. Brain controllability: Not a slam dunk yet. Neuroimage. 2019 Oct 15;200:552-555.
  7. Della Penna S, Corbetta M, Wens V, de Pasquale F. The Impact of the Geometric Correction Scheme on MEG Functional Topology at Rest. Front Neurosci. 2019 Oct 25
  8. Fortuna A, Gizzi M, Bello L, Martinelli I, Bertolin C, Pegoraro E, Corbetta M, Sorarù G; Edaravone Study Group. Safety and efficacy of edaravone compared to historical controls in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis from North-Eastern Italy. J Neurol Sci. 2019 Sep 15
  9. Griffis JC, Metcalf NV, Corbetta M, Shulman GL. Structural Disconnections Explain Brain Network Dysfunction after Stroke. Cell Rep. 2019 Sep 3;28(10):2527-2540.e9
  10. Ferguson MA, Lim C, Cooke D, Darby RR, Wu O, Rost NS, Corbetta M, Grafman J, Fox MD. A human memory circuit derived from brain lesions causing amnesia Nat Commun. 2019 Aug 2; 10(1):3497.
  11. Chauhan S, Vig L, De Filippo De Grazia M, Corbetta M, Ahmad S, Zorzi M. A Comparison of Shallow and Deep Learning Methods for Predicting Cognitive Performance of Stroke Patients From MRI Lesion Image Front Neuroinform. 2019 Jul 31;13:53
  12. Karolis VR, Corbetta M, Thiebaut de Schotten M. The architecture of functional lateralisation and its relationship to callosal connectivity in the human brain. Nat Commun. 2019 Mar29;10(1):1417.
  13. Astafiev SV, Wen J, Brody DL, Cross AH, Anokhin AP, Zinn KL, Corbetta M, Yablonskiy DA.A Novel Gradient Echo Plural Contrast Imaging Method Detects Brain Tissue Abnormalities in Patients With TBI Without Evident Anatomical Changes on Clinical MRI: A Pilot Study.Mil Med. 2019 Mar 1;184(Suppl 1):218-227.
  14. Patel GH, Sestieri C, Corbetta M. The evolution of the temporoparietal junction and posterior superior temporal sulcus. Cortex. 2019 Feb 7. pii: S0010-9452
  15. Baldassarre A, Metcalf NV, Shulman GL, Corbetta M. Brain networks' functional connectivity separates aphasic deficits in stroke. Neurology. 2019 Jan 8;92(2):e125-e135
  16. Rocha RP, Koçillari L, Suweis S, Corbetta M, Maritan A. Homeostatic plasticity and emergence of functional networks in a whole-brain model at criticality. Sci Rep. 2018 Oct 24;8(1):15682
  17. Cona, G., Koçillari, L., Palombit, A., Bertoldo, A., Maritan, A., & Corbetta, M. (2018). Archetypes of human cognition defined by time preference for reward and their brain correlates: An evolutionary trade-off approach. NeuroImage, 185(October 2018), 322–334. neuroimage.2018.10.050
  18. Rocha RP, Kocillari L, Suweis S, Corbetta M, Maritan A Homeostatic plasticity and emergence of functional networks in a whole-brain model at criticality. Scientific Reports 2018 Oct 24;8(1):15682
  19. Demirtaş M, Ponce-Alvarez A, Gilson M, Hagmann P, Mantini D, Betti V, Romani GL, Friston K, Corbetta M, Deco G. Distinct modes of functional connectivity induced by movie-watching. Neuroimage. 2018 Sep 17;184:335-348. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.09.042.
  20. Siegel JS, Seitzman BA, Ramsey LE, Ortega M, Gordon EM, Dosenbach NUF, Petersen SE, Shulman GL, Corbetta M. Re-emergence of modular brain networks in stroke recovery.Cortex. 2018 Apr
  21. Lin LY, Ramsey L, Metcalf NV, Rengachary J, Shulman GL, Shimony JS, Corbetta M. Stronger prediction of motor recovery and outcome post-stroke by cortico-spinal tract integrity than functional connectivity. PLoS One. 2018 Aug 23;13(8):e0202504. eCollection 2018.
  22. Tu C, Rocha RP, Corbetta M, Zampieri S, Zorzi M, Suweis S. Warnings and caveats in brain controllability. Neuroimage. 2018 Aug 1
  23. Betti V, Corbetta M, de Pasquale F, Wens V, Della Penna S. Topology of Functional Connectivity and Hub Dynamics in the Beta Band As Temporal Prior for Natural Vision in the Human Brain. J Neurosci. 2018 Apr 11;38(15):3858-3871.
  24. Chacko RV, Kim B, Jung SW, Daitch AL, Roland JL, Metcalf NV, Corbetta M, Shulman GL, Leuthardt EC. Distinct phase-amplitude couplings distinguish cognitive processes in human attention. Neuroimage. 2018.
  25. Adhikari MH, Deco G, Corbetta M. Reply: Defining a functional network homeostasis after stroke: EEG-based approach is complementary to functional MRI. Brain. 2017 Dec 1;140(12):e72
  26. Siegel JS, Mitra A,Laumann TO, Seitzman BA, Raichle M, Corbetta M., Snyder AZ. Data Quality Influences Observed Links Between Functional Connectivity and Behavior. Cereb Cortex. 2017 Sep 1;27(9):4492-4502.
  27. Saenger, Adhikari M, Hagmann P, Deco G, Corbetta M.. Linking Entropy at Rest with the Underlying Structural Connectivity in the Healthy and Lesioned Brain. Cereb Cortex. 2017 Jul 13:1-11.
  28. Kim D, Kay K, Shulman GL, Corbetta M. A new modular brain organization of the BOLD signal during natural vision. Cereb Cortex. 2017 Jul 13:1-17.
  29. Siegel JS, Shulman GL, Corbetta M. Measuring functional connectivity in stroke: Approaches and considerations. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2017 Jan 1:271678X17709198.
  30. Adhikari MH, Hacker CD, Siegel JS, Griffa A, Hagmann P, Deco G, Corbetta M. Decreased integration and information capacity in stroke measured by whole brain models of resting state activity.Brain 2017 Apr 1;140(4):1068-1085.
  31. Hacker CD, Snyder AZ, Pahwa M, Corbetta M, Leuthardt EC. Frequency-specific electrophysiologic correlates of resting state fMRI networks. Neuroimage. 2017 Apr 1;149:446-457.
  32. Quaglio G, Corbetta M, Karapiperis T, Amunts K, Koroshetz W, Yamamori T, Draghia-Akli R. Understanding the brain through large, multidisciplinary research initiatives.Lancet Neurol. 2017 Mar;16(3):183-184.
  33. Meehan TP, Bressler SL, Tang W, Astafiev SV, Sylvester CM, Shulman GL, Corbetta M. Top-down cortical interactions in visuospatial attention. Brain Struct Funct. 2017 Mar 20.
  34. Carter AR, McAvoy MP, Siegel JS, Hong X, Astafiev SV, Rengachary J, Zinn K, Metcalf NV, Shulman GL, Corbetta M. Differential white matter involvement associated with distinct visuospatial deficits after right hemisphere stroke. Cortex. 2016 Dec 20;88:81-97.
  35. Baldassarre A, Ramsey LE, Siegel JS, Shulman GL, Corbetta M. Brain connectivity and neurological disorders after stroke. Curr Opin Neurol. 2016 Dec;29(6):706-713.
  36. Capotosto P, Baldassarre A, Sestieri C, Spadone S, Romani GL, Corbetta M. Task and Regions Specific Top-Down Modulation of Alpha Rhythms in Parietal Cortex. Cereb Cortex. 2016 Sep 6.
  37. Baldassarre A, Capotosto P, Committeri G, Corbetta M. Magnetic stimulation of visual cortex impairs perceptual learning. Neuroimage. 2016 Aug 31. pii: S1053-8119(16)30456-6.
  38. Siegel JS, Mitra A, Laumann TO, Seitzman BA, Raichle M, Corbetta M, Snyder AZ. Data Quality Influences Observed Links Between Functional Connectivity and Behavior. Cereb Cortex. 2016 Aug 22.
  39. Siegel JS, Ramsey LE, Snyder AZ, Metcalf NV, Chacko RV, Weinberger K, Baldassarre A, Hacker CD, Shulman GL, Corbetta M. Disruptions of network connectivity predict impairment in multiple behavioral domains after stroke. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Jul 11. pii: 201521083.
  40. Patel KR, Ramsey LE, Metcalf NV, Shulman GL, Corbetta M. >Early diffusion evidence of retrograde transsynaptic degeneration in the human visual system. Neurology. 2016 Jun 15.
  41. Ramsey LE, Siegel JS, Baldassarre A, Metcalf NV, Zinn K, Shulman GL, Corbetta M. Normalization of network connectivity in hemispatial neglect recovery. Ann Neurol. 2016 Jun 9.
  42. Baldassarre A, Ramsey L, Rengachary J, Zinn K, Siegel JS, Metcalf NV, Strube MJ, Snyder nattention deficits in acute right-hemisphere stroke. Brain. 2016 May 25.
  43. Astafiev SV, Zinn KL, Shulman GL, Corbetta M.Exploring the physiological correlates of chronic mild traumatic brain injury symptoms. Neuroimage Clin. 2016 Jan 6;11:10-9.

  

  MAURIZIO CORBETTA

  • MD, Chair and Professor of Neurology, University of Padova;
  • Director Padova Neuroscience Center (PNC)
  • https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=O825l5YAAAAJ

  Selected Awards

  • 1996 – Physician Scientist Award National Eye Institute, NIH
  • 2000 – J.S. McDonnell Foundation Award in Cognitive Sciences
  • 2005 – Marie Curie Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience, European Union
  • 2006 – Norman Geschwind Award in Behavioral Neurology, Academy of Neurology
  • 2008 – Distinguished Senior Investigator Award, Washington University
  • 2010 – Top 100 Italian Scientists
  • 2013-2015 – America’s Top Doctors, Castle Connolly: top 1% of all nominated physicians
  • 2015 – Outstanding Clinician-Scientist Award, American Society of Neurorehabilitation.
  • 2012-2016 – ‘Highly Cited Researcher’ by Thompson Reuters.
  • 2016 – Two of my papers ^52,53 are in the top 100 papers in the field of Neuroscience⁵⁴. One is the 7^th highest cited paper53.
  • 2020 – Highly Cited Researchers

  Current funding

  • Fondation BIAL
  • Fondazione Celeghin