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Dr. Dalila Burin

Research Fellow (ADAPT)

 burind@tcd.ie

 

Research Fellow (Trinity Long Room Hub)

Research Fellow (School Office - Computer Science & Stats)


Biography

I got my PhD in Neuroscience at University of Turin (Italy): main goal of my research was to understand the normal cognitive functioning, starting from a neuropsychological approach; I investigated bodily self identity and body awareness with different paradigms, including subjective, behavioural (e.g., the rubber hand illusion) and physiological measurements (e.g., motor evoked potential), mostly on healthy subjects and also on neurological patients. I spent a period abroad, where I learned the technique of Immersive Virtual Reality. Then, I combined my background on cognitive neuropsychology with this new technique: I mainly explored rehabilitative solutions for motor disorders exploiting the possibilities offered by immersive virtual reality. I have worked at the Smart Aging research Center (IDAC, Tohoku University, Japan) where I developed protocols to improve physical and cognitive functions, on young people as well as elderly, using immersive virtual reality and other ICT based solutions. Currently, I am a MSCA Research Fellow at the Trinity College Dublin: here I expand my project on cognitive and social effects following the somatic manipulation of the virtual body.
Dalila Burin, Adriana Salatino, Mounia Ziat, Editorial: Virtual, mixed, and augmented reality in cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, Frontiers in Psychology, 2022, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Dalila Burin, Gabriele Cavanna, Daniela Rabellino, Yuka Kotozaki, Ryuta Kawashima, Neuroendocrine Response and State Anxiety Due to Psychosocial Stress Decrease after a Training with Subject"s Own (but Not Another) Virtual Body: An RCT Study, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19, (10), 2022, p6340 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Dalila Burin and Ryuta Kawashima, Repeated Exposure to Illusory Sense of Body Ownership and Agency Over a Moving Virtual Body Improves Executive Functioning and Increases Prefrontal Cortex Activity in the Elderly, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 15, 2021, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Riccardo Tambone, Giulia Poggio, Maria Pyasik, Dalila Burin, Olga Dal Monte, Selene Schintu, Tommaso Ciorli, Laura Lucà, Maria Vittoria Semino, Fabrizio Doricchi, Lorenzo Pia, Changing your body changes your eating attitudes: embodiment of a slim virtual avatar induces avoidance of high-calorie food, Heliyon, 7, (7), 2021, pe07515 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Riccardo Tambone and Alberto Giachero and Melanie Calati and Maria Teresa Molo and Dalila Burin and Maria Pyasik and Francesca Cabria and Lorenzo Pia, Using Body Ownership to Modulate the Motor System in Stroke Patients, Psychological Science, 32, (5), 2021, p655--667 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Maria Pyasik, Irene Ronga, Dalila Burin, Adriana Salatino, Pietro Sarasso, Francesca Garbarini, Raffaella Ricci, Lorenzo Pia, I'm a believer: Illusory self-generated touch elicits sensory attenuation and somatosensory evoked potentials similar to the real self-touch, NeuroImage, 229, 2021, p117727 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Innocenzo Rainero and Mathew J Summers and Michaela Monter and Marco Bazzani and Eleftheria Giannouli and Georg Aumayr and Dalila Burin and Paolo Provero and Alessandro E Vercelli and, The My Active and Healthy Aging ICT platform prevents quality of life decline in older adults: a randomised controlled study, Age and Ageing, 2021, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Lorenzo Pia, Carlotta Fossataro, Dalila Burin, Valentina Bruno, Lucia Spinazzola, Patrizia Gindri, Katerina Fotopoulou, Anna Berti, Francesca Garbarini, The anatomo-clinical picture of the pathological embodiment over someone else's body part after stroke, Cortex, 130, 2020, p203--219 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
C. Fossataro and D. Burin and I. Ronga and M. Galigani and A. Rossi Sebastiano and L. Pia and F. Garbarini, Agent-dependent modulation of corticospinal excitability during painful transcutaneous electrical stimulation, NeuroImage, 217, 2020, p116897 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Dalila Burin, Noriki Yamaya, Rie Ogitsu, Ryuta Kawashima, Virtual training leads to real acute physical, cognitive and neural benefits on healthy adults: study protocol for a randomized-controlled trial, 2019, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
  

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Research Interests

Description Of Research Interests

How does the brain represent the body and its movements? What technological tools can we use to explore bodily and motor consciousness? How these motor and cognitive processes can be exploited for health, well-being, and clinical purposes? The focus of my work is to understand the processes behind the bodily self-identity, using different measurements, from behavioral (multisensory illusions) to subjective (cognitive/neuropsychological test and questionnaires), from physiological (e.g., electromyography, skin conductance, heart rate) to brain imaging/stimulation (electroencephalography, infrared near spectroscopy, transcranial magnetic stimulation) methods. In the last years, I have included in my research immersive virtual reality (IVR) as a technique that allows the display of a realistic virtual body, inducing the illusory sense of ownership and agency over it. In my current project, the idea is that visuo-motor manipulations of the virtual avatar can have beneficial effects on physiological (muscle volume and activation) and cognitive (body-related social biases) functions in healthy individuals. I want to propose a novel form of training, entirely implemented in the IVR system, performed exclusively by the virtual body (while the real person's body is still), that directly manipulates morphological aspects of the moving virtual body but positively affects different person's bodily and mental functions.