CV of Rossella Falcone, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow

ROSSELLA FALCONE
25/November/1984
Telephone number: +39-3204555235 (IT)
                                +1-202-651-0297 (US)
E-mail: rossella.falcone@uniroma1.it
             rossella.falcone@nih.gov
Language:  Italian
                   English

Programming skills

• C language
• Matlab

Software projects for Neurophysiology (based on C language)

• Cortex  
• Rex

Toolbox for neuroscience research (based on Matlab)

• Psychtoolbox

Acquisition system of neuronal activity

• TDT recording system
• Trellis

Data analysis tools

• Matlab
• Matoff 

EDUCATION
July 2006: bachelor’s degree in Human Biology at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”.
October 2008: master’s degree in Neurobiology at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”.
September 2009:  National license to practice as a biologist.
February 2013: PhD in Neurophysiology at the “Department of Physiology and Pharmacology” of the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (TUTOR: Prof. Aldo Genovesio).
November 2009 – November 2012: PhD student in Neurophysiology at the “Department of Physiology and Pharmacology” of the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (TUTOR: Prof. Aldo Genovesio).
November 2012 – November 2013: Postdoc with Prof. Aldo Genovesio in the laboratory of Neurophysiology at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”.

• During my PhD and brief postdoc period I have participated to experiments both on monkeys and humans. I have provided evidence using different paradigms that monkeys can interact and monitor the behavior of human agents. I have also recorded the single neural activity in the prefrontal cortex of two monkeys in an interactive task with humans. I am currently analyzing the neural data.

January 2014 - now: Postdoc with Dr. Barry J. Richmond in the laboratory of Neuropsychology at National Institutes of Health (NIH) of USA.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE
January 2010 - January 2013: physiology classes for medical students and nurses.
Topics
Neurophysiology, the nervous system, the respiratory system, the urinary system, memory and learning, sleep, and blood.

SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE AND COLLABORATIONS
September 2005 – June 2006: laboratory of Genetic Diagnosis at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” (TUTOR: Professor Giuseppe Novelli).
July 2006 – September 2006: volunteer at laboratory of Molecular Oncology at the IRCCS CROB of Rionero in Vulture.
April 2007 – September 2008: undergraduate thesis in the Laboratory of Psychobiology at the Fondazione Santa Lucia of Rome (TUTOR: Dr. Martine Ammassari Teule).
February 2009 – March 2009: volunteer at laboratory of neuroscience development at the University of Rome “Campus Biomedico” (TUTOR: Professor Flavio Keller).
April 2009 – October 2009: volunteer at laboratory of Neurophysiology at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (TUTOR: Dr. Aldo Genovesio).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Falcone R., Cirillo R., Ferraina S. And Genovesio A. Neural activity in macaque medial frontal cortex is predictive of others’ choices. Under Review.
• Falcone R., Brumanonti E., Ferraina S. and Genovesio A (2016). Human specific goal activity in the monkey prefrontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 26(12): 4613-4622.
• Genovesio A.,  Tsujimoto S., Navarra G., Falcone R. and  Wise S.P. (2014) Autonomous encoding of irrelevant goals and outcomes by prefrontal cortex. The Journal of Neuroscience,  34(5): 1970-1978.

• Falcone R., Bevacqua S., Cerasti E., Brunamonti E., Cervelloni M. and Genovesio A. (2013) Transfer of the nonmatch-to-goal rule in monkeys across cognitive domains. Plos_ONE, 8(12): e84100.

• Bevacqua S., Cerasti E., Falcone R., Cervelloni M., Brunamonti E., Ferraina S. and Genovesio A.(2013) Macaque monkeys can learn token values from human models through vicarious reward. Plos_ONE, 8(3): e59961.

• Brunamonti E., Falcone R., Genovesio A., Costa S., Ferraina S. (2012) Gaze orientation interferes with mental numerical representation.  Cognitive processing, 13(4): 375-379.

• Falcone R., Brunamonti E., Genovesio A. (2012) Vicarious learning from human models in monkeys. Plos_ON, 7(7): e40283.

• Falcone R., Brunamonti E., Ferraina S., Genovesio A. (2012) Monkeys monitor human goals in a nonmatch-to-goal interactive task. Plos_ONE, 7(2): e32209.

SFN (2016) – San Diego (USA). Samarth Chandra, Rossella Falcone, Barry Richmond. Mean luminance responsive cells in Primary Visual Cortex of Rhesus macaque.

SFN (2016) – San Diego (USA). Rossella Cirillo, Rossella Falcone, Aldo Genovesio. Predictive neural activity of others' behavior in the macaque medial frontal cortex.

SFN (2016) – San Diego (USA). Rossella Falcone, David Weintraub, Barry Richmond.
Temporal modulation of tonically active neurons (TANs) in monkey ventral striatum related to reward size and delay to obtain it.
SFN (2015) – Chicago (USA). Rossella Falcone, David Weintraub, Gang Chen, Barry Richmond.
The neuronal population in monkey ventral striatum encodes both reward size and delay to obtain it.
SFN (2014) - Washington D.C. (USA). Falcone R., Brunamonti E., Ferraina S., Genovesio A. Representation of human goals in prefrontal cortex of the monkey.
SINS (2013) - Rome (ITALY). Falcone R., Cerasti E., Brunamonti E., Ferraina S. and Genovesio A. Human’s goals representation in monkey dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
SFN (2012) - New Orleans (USA). Falcone R., Bevacqua S., Cerasti E., Brunamonti E. and  Genovesio A. Generalization of the non-match to goal rule in monkeys across cognitive domains.
SFN (2012) - New Orleans (USA). Genovesio A., Tsujimoto S., Navarra G., Falcone R. and Wise S.P. Selective monitoring of irrelevant goal and outcome information by prefrontal cortex during a distance discrimination task.
IBRO (2011) - Florence (ITALY). Falcone R., Brunamonti E., Genovesio A., Costa S. and Ferraina S. Gaze direction interacts with numerical representation.