| Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University

Marta Pizzolante

PhD Studentat Catholic University of Milan
Milan,
Italy
Focus area: Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, Neuroaesthetics

Marta Pizzolante earned her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology in 2019 at University of Milan-Bicocca and then specialized (MSc) in Cognitive Neuroscience at University of Trento / CIMeC (Center for Mind / Brain Sciences) with a thesis on neuroaesthetics titled “The role of emotions in aesthetic perception: an integrated virtual reality eye-tracking study”. She is now a doctoral student at the Catholic University of Milan, with a fellowship devoted to creating a new user experience index for qualifying and quantifying experiences of users in a simulated scenario while interacting with real objects. Her research focused mainly on the intersection between aesthetic transformative experiences supported by new technologies, such as Virtual Reality, and how these technologies can foster creativity and can involve a subject into an experience that can have relevant emotional and cognitive consequences for the human being. She had a TED Talk on it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XpN_9ZeW0&ab_channel=TEDxTalks) and she writes about these topics in some specialized art magazines such as ARTRIBUNE and ArtsLife.