Valentina Cazzato

I am a lecturer (assistant professor) in Cognitive Neuroscience and Lab Leader of the Body Image Lab at Liverpool John Moores University (UK). After completing a PhD on the neural correlates of reflexive social attention at 'Sapienza' University of Rome (Italy), I became interested in the neural underpinnings of body representation in healthy and eating disorders populations during my post-doc at the University of Udine (Italy). I had since then continued to research in this area which now spans across a broad range of topics, focusing on the psychological and neural basis of body image and body representation in both healthy populations and in patients suffering from Eating Disorders and Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Furthermore, I am interested in understanding how individual differences for e.g., in interoceptive ability and sociocultural factors in western societies might impact the formation of body image and how we appreciate the human body. I investigate body image by means of psychophysics, non-invasive brain stimulation (TMS and tDCS) as well as fMRI techniques.