About
I have made several historical contributions by being the first scientist to attempt an approach or propose a theory, which can be viewed by following the link.
My research investigates the effects of culture and social contexts on human development, brain processes, and genetics. I'm particularly interested in how these effects can produce psychiatric disorders. I investigate these research questions through behavioral, neuroimaging, and genetic studies. Social interactions are the fundamental building blocks of culture and a major source of knowledge about the world. Therefore, I am primarily focusing my work on how individuals adapt to social interactions and how psychiatric patient groups may have different adaptive patterns, as I believe this is the most fundamental way to study sources of cultural differences.
Most psychiatric disorders are characterized by some maladaptive social behaviors. The symptoms of many of these disorders also vary across cultures, indicating that, despite social deficits, social information contributes to the phenotypes of many disorders. This ostensible contradiction may be, in part, explained by challenging social environments, atypical neural processes, or specific genetic or epigenetic traits. However, little is currently understood about the relationship between the brain, genes, culture and disorder. Investigating this relationship may elucidate currently unstudied aspects of social development, cognition, and neural plasticity.
My research focuses on identifying variations in neural processes and genetic traits as a function of immediate social context or broader sociocultural differences, and the implications of these variations for mental illness. I am also interested in developing improved methods for investigating the relationship between culture and the brain, and studying the influence context interpretation has on psychopathology. My interests are primarily empirical, but extend to larger implications for public health, social policy as well as theoretical and neuroethical issues, such as conceptualizing the relationship between brain, genes, culture, and disorder; promoting equal representation of minorities in medical research; and improving diagnostic accuracy in migrant patients. My current investigations take a biomedical approach and studies disorders from the DSM and ICD; in the future, I hope to expand this research to culture-bound syndromes and underrepresented populations. Click for more about my research on Cultural Neuropsychiatry, CBB Model, or Brain Culture and Development.
I am currently developing a Science of Change for neuropsychology. Stay tuned for updates.
About Me
I am an Italian-American scientist (dual citizen) who has lived in 5 countries - Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.S. Countries of extended stay include Japan, Italy, and Brazil. I've also traveled to Czechia, Georgia, India, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, and other European countries (Austria, England, France, Greece, Ireland). These experiences have taught me a lot about human social adaptability and development and I hope to bring my unique vantage point to methods and lessons from cultural neuroscience and transcultural psychiatry to describe the fundamental nature of mental disorders.
This website is designed to provide an overview of my professional work. The aim of the CrafaLab Blog is to share recent news and accomplishments, and act as a hub for relevant research in the social, cultural, and psychiatric neuroscience.