Memory Project - Participants

Participants and Consortium

The Consortium comprises four partners from two European countries (Germany, and Italy) and one associated country (Switzerland): two partners are international experts in Neuroscience, and two in ICT. Each of these partners brings to the Consortium the necessary and sufficient resources, expertise and knowledge to tackle the design, realization, validation and exploitation of the MEMORY methodology and model, and to achieve the ambitious objectives of the project. The scientific coordination of the project is carried out by the Libera Università "Vita Salute S.Raffaele" (UHSR). The other partners of the Project Consortium are: the Philipps-University Marburg (UNIMAR), the University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), and the Italian National Research Council (CNR).

Units:

The group working under the Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele conducts interdisciplinary basic and applied research in physiology and psychophysics in collaboration with various national and international institutions, particularly the Università di Firenze and the Stella Maris Hosptial, both of which are responsible for much of the research of this project. There are also important collaborative links with the University of Western Australia. The members of this research team include:

San Raffaele Laboratory

Professor Concetta Morrone: group and lab leader http://www.pisavisionlab.org/morrone.htm

Dr Marco Cicchini: post-doc

Dr Sofia Crespi: graduate student

Dr Paola Binda: graduate student

Ms Ottavia Silva: senior student

Florence Laboratory (Division of Applied Visual Epistemology)

Professor David Burr: lab leader http://www.pisavisionlab.org/burr.htm

Dr Michela Del Viva: university researcher

Dr Stefano Baldassi: university researcher http://www.pisavisionlab.org/baldassi.htm

Dr Roberto Arrighi: post-doc

Dr Nicola Megna: graduate student

Dr Monica Gori: graduate student

Ms Eleonora Della Rocca: senior student

Professor John Ross: visiting professor (from the University of Western Australia)

Stella Maris Hospital (Magnetic Resonance Laboratory)

Dr Michela Tosetti: lab leader

Dr Laura Biagi: post-doc

Representative Publications

Burr, D.C. (1980). Motion smear. Nature, 284, 164-165.
Morrone, M.C., Ross, J., Burr, D.C., & Owens, R. (1986). Mach bands depend on spatial phase. Nature, 324, 250-253.
Burr, D.C., Morrone, M.C., & Ross, J. (1994). Selective suppression of the magnocellular visual pathway during saccadic eye movements. Nature, 371, 511-513
Morrone, M.C., Burr, D.C. & Vaina, L. (1995). Two stages of visual processing for radial and circular motion. Nature, 376, 507-509.
Morrone, M.C., Ross, J. & Burr, D.C. (1997). Apparent position of visual targets during real and simulated saccadic eye movements. J. Neuroscience, 17, 7941-7953.
Neri, P., Morrone, M.C. & Burr, D.C. (1998). Seeing Biological motion. Nature, 394, 894-896.
Burr, D.C., Morgan, M.J. & Morrone, M.C. (1999). Saccadic suppression precedes visual motion analysis. Current Biology, 9, 1207-1209.
Diamond, M.R., Ross, J. & Morrone, M.C. (2000) Extraretinal Control of Saccadic Suppression. J. Neuroscience, 20, 3442-3448.
Morrone M.C., Tosetti M., Montanaro D., Burr D.C., Fiorentini A., & Cioni G., (2000). A cortical area that responds specifically to optic flow, revealed by function Magnetic Resonance Imaging." Nature Neuroscienc, 3, 1322-1328.
Ross, J., Morrone, M.C., Goldberg, M.E. & Burr, D.C. (2001). Changes in visual perception at the time of saccades. Trends in Neuroscience, 24, 113-121.
Melcher, D., & Morrone, M.C. (2003). Spatiotopic temporal integration of visual motion across saccadic eye movements. Nature Neurosci, 6 (8), 877-881.
Perna, A., Tosetti, M., Montanaro, D., & Morrone, M.C. (2005). Neuronal mechanisms for illusory brightness perception in humans. Neuron, 47 (5), 645-651.
Morrone, C., Ross, J., & Burr, D. (2005). Saccades cause relativistic compression of time as well as space. Nature Neurosci. 8(7):950-4

UNIMAR

The work in the field of the Neurosciences at Philipps-University Marburg is well recognized at the national and international level. Researchers investigating the central nervous system are established in the departments of biology, linguistics, medicine, physics, and psychology. Many of these groups are working together in interdisciplinary research consortia at the national (funded by the German Science Foundation, DFG) and international level (funded by EU, and HFSP). The neurophysics group currently works with researchers from Marburg (linguistics, medicine, and psychology), neighbouring Justus Liebig University Giessen (Medicine and Psychology) and at the international level with the Institute de Sciences Cognitives (ISC, Bron, France), Rutgers University (USA) and Salk Institute, La Jolla (USA).

The neurophysics group at UNIMAR will be responsible for the neurophysiological experiments (the extracellular recordings from behaving monkeys), and part of the neuronal modelling. The group will study the dynamics of eye position signals as well as the dynamics of the shifting of visual receptive fields in different areas of monkey parietal cortex and its implications for neural connectivity.

The group head is Professor Frank Bremmer: http://www.physik.uni-marburg.de/bremmer-frank/research.html

Representative publications:

1. Bremmer, F., Ilg, U. J., Thiele, A., Distler, C., & Hoffmann, K.P. (1997). Eye position effects in monkey cortex. I: Visual and pursuit related activity in extrastriate areas MT and MST. J.Neurophysiol., 77, 944-961.

2. Bremmer, F., Distler, C., & Hoffmann, K.-P. (1997). Eye position effects in monkey cortex. II: Pursuit and fixation related activity in posterior parietal areas LIP and 7A. J.Neurophysiol., 77, 962-977.

3. Duhamel, J.-R., Bremmer, F., Ben Hamed, S., & Graf, W. (1997). Spatial invariance of visual receptive fields in parietal cortex neurons. Nature, 389, 845-848.

4. Boussaoud, D., Jouffrais, C., & Bremmer, F. (1998). Eye position effects on the neuronal activity of dorsal premotor cortex in the macaque monkey. J.Neurophysiol., 80, 1132 - 1150.

5. Bremmer, F., Pouget, A., & Hoffmann, K.-P. (1998). Eye position encoding in the macaque posterior parietal cortex. Eur.J.Neurosci., 10, 153-160.

6. Bremmer, F., Graf, W., Ben Hamed, S., & Duhamel, J.-R. (1999). Eye position encoding in the macaque ventral intraparietal area (VIP). NeuroReport, 10, 873 – 878.

7. Boussaoud, D., & Bremmer, F. (1999). Gaze effects in the cerebral cortex: reference frames for space coding and action. Exp. Brain Res., 128, 170-180.

8. Bremmer, F. (2000). Eye position effects in macaque area V4. NeuroReport, 11, 1277-1283.

9. Bremmer, F., Schlack, A., Duhamel, J.-R., Graf, W., Fink, G.R. (2001). Space coding in primate posterior parietal cortex. NeuroImage, 14, 46-51.

10. Krekelberg, B., Kubischik, M., Hoffmann, K.-P., & Bremmer, F. (2003). Neural correlates of visual localization and perisaccadic mislocalization. Neuron, 37, 537-545.

11. Bremmer, F., & Krekelberg, B. (2003). Seeing and acting at the same time: challenges for brain (and) research. Neuron, 38, 367-370.

12. Konen, C.S., Kleiser, R., Wittsack, H.-J., Bremmer, F.& Seitz, R.J. (2004). The encoding of saccadic eye movements within human posterior parietal cortex. Neuroimage, 22, 304 – 314.

13. Schlack, A., Sterbing-D'Angelo, S.J., Hartung, K., Hoffmann, K.-P., & Bremmer, F. (2005). Multisensory Space Representations in the Macaque Ventral Intraparietal Area (VIP). J.Neurosci., 25, 4616 – 4625.

SUPSI

SUPSI (the University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland) is located mainly in the surroundings of Lugano, the principal town in the Swiss Italian-speaking canton Ticino. The main goal of SUPSI is the promotion of technological development and technological transfer. In this proposal they will play the key role of modeling the NCSs and integrating ICT and Nature Science knowledge, for a better interdisciplinary exploitation. Prof. Giordano and Dr. Puiatti will work directly on the project for a total of half time. One senior researcher, Salvatore Vanini, and one doctoral student, Hoang Anh Nguyen, will be also dedicated to this project.

Team Members:

Silvia Giordano

Alessandro Puiatti

Salvatore Vanini

Hoang Anh Nguyen

Relevant publications

1. R. Boutaba, S. Giordano and M. Smirnov "Autonomic Communications and Computing ", IEEE Press, June 2005

2. G. Anastasi, S. Giordano and S. Olariu "Sensor Networks and Systems for Pervasive Computing", IEEE Press, March 2005

3. S. Giordano, I. Stojmenovic and C. Tschuding " Wireless On demand Network Systems and Services ", IEEE Press, January 2005

4. S. Basagni, M. Conti, S. Giordano and I. Stojmenovic " Mobile Ad Hoc Networking", IEEE & Wiley Press, May 2004

5. M. Conti, S. Giordano, E. Gregari, S. Olariu ”Personal Wireless Communications” LNCS2775 - Springer, September 2003

6. G. A. Di Caro, S. Giordano, M. Kulig, D. Lenzarini, A. Puiatti, F. Schwitter, and S. Vanin. “WiOptimo: A Cross-Layering and Autonomic Approach to Optimized Internetwork Roaming” Accepted for publication to AHSWN journal; 2006

7. S. Giordano and C. Rosenberg "Ad hoc and Sensor Networks " on IEEE Communication Magazine, to appear April 2006

8. S. Giordano and C. Rosenberg "Ad hoc and Sensor Networks” on IEEE Communication Magazine, Nov. 2005

9. S. Giordano and C. Rosenberg "Ad hoc and Sensor Networks" on IEEE Communication Magazine, July 2005

10. S. Giordano and C. Rosenberg "Ad hoc and Sensor Networks" on IEEE Communication Magazine, March 2005

11. L. Blazevic, S. Giordano, J-Y. Le Boudec "A Location Based Routing Method for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks", In IEEE Transaction on Mobile Computing, December 2004, Vol. 3 No. 4

12. M. Conti, S. Giordano, G. Maselli, G. Turi “Cross-Layering in Mobile Ad Hoc Network Design " IEEE Computer, February 2004

13. G. A. Di Caro, S. Giordano, M. Kulig, D. Lenzarini, A. Puiatti and F. Schwitter. “A Cross-Layering and Autonomic Approach to Optimized Seamless Handover” In Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Conference on Wireless On demand Network Systems and Services (WONS), January 2006.

14. S. Giordano, M. Kulig, D. Lenzarini, A. Puiatti, F. Schwitter, and S. Vanin. “WiOptiMo: Optimised seamless handover.”

In Proceedings of IEEE WPMC, September 2005.

15. R. Bernasconi, I. Defilippis, S. Giordano, A. Puiatti ”Experimental results with an enhanced MAC architecture for multi-hop wireless networks” in Proceedings of IEEE ICPS REALMAN, Santorini, Grece, July 2005

CNR

CNR (Italian National Research Council) participates in the project through the
researchers of the Internet Networks Research Department of the Institute of Informatics
and Telematics (IIT) http://www.iit.cnr.it. IIT is located in Pisa and carries out research activities, technology transfer and training in the field of information and communication technology and in the field of computational sciences.

Currently, the INRD participates and leads many research projects funded by national (government, industries, private foundations) and international (e.g., European Commission, NATO) institutions, targeting the emerging area of Mobile and Pervasive Computing Systems with special emphasis on networking, middleware and security. Since 2002, INRD is leading the European FP5 FET Project MobileMAN (http://cnd.iit.cnr.it/mobileMAN/), which aims at defining and developing a metropolitan area, self-organizing, and totally wireless network, and has the leadership of the networking activities of a three-year national project called "Virtual Immersive COMmunications" (VICOM), whose goal is to design communication system architecture for mobile virtual immersive services.

Prof Conti and Dr. Passarella will be highly involved in the project dedicating about half time to the project activities. A PosDoc will be hired to work on the project. In addition, INRD doctoral and master students will contribute to the project activities.

Relevant Publications

1. M. Conti, "Body, Personal, and Local Wireless Ad Hoc Networks", Chapter 1 of Handbook of Ad Hoc Networks (M. Ilyas Editor), CRC Press, New York, 2003.

2. M. Conti, "Wireless Communications and Pervasive Technologies", Chapter 4 of Smart Environments: Technologies, Protocols and Applications, Diane Cook and Sajal K. Das (Editors), John Wiley and Sons, 2004. pp. 63-99.

3. M. Conti, “Principles and Applications of Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks”, in The Hanbook of Computer Networks, Volume II, Hossein Bidgoli (Editor), John Wiley & Sons inc. 2006

4. A. Anastasi , E. Borgia, M. Conti, E. Gregori, A. Passarella, “Understanding the Real Behavior of Mote and 802.11 Ad Hoc Networks: An Experimental Approach”, Pervasive and Mobile Computing Journal, Vol 1, N. 2, June 2005.

5. M. Conti, E. Gregori, Ad Hoc Networks Journal, Special Issue on “Ad Hoc Networking for Pervasive Systems”, Volume 3, Number 2, March 2005, pp. 115-117.

6. G. Anastasi, M. Conti, E. Gregori, C. Spagoni, G. Valente, “Motes Sensor Networks in Dynamic Scenarios: an Experimental Study for Pervasive Applications in Urban Environments”, Journal of Ubiquitous Computing and Intelligence (JUCI) Vol 1. N.1, 2006.

7. G. Anastasi, M. Conti, A. Falchi, E. Gregori and A. Passarella, Performance Measurements of Mote Sensor Networks, Proceedings of the Seventh ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems (MSWiM 2004), Venice (Italy), October 3-7, 2004.

8. G. Anastasi, M. Conti, E. Gregori, G. Valente, “Motes sensor networks in dynamic scenarios: a performance study for pervasive applications in urban environments”, 11^th Annual Conference of the Italian Association for Sensors and Microsystems, Lecce 8-10 January, 2006.

9. S. Goel, A. Passarella, and T. Imielinski, “Using Buddies to Live Longer in a Boring World”, Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on Sensor Networks and Systems for Pervasive Computing (PerSeNS 2006), Pisa, Italy, March 13, 2006.