Laura Piccardi

Laura Piccardi is Full Professor at the Department of Psychology of Sapienza University of Rome and collaborates with San Raffaele Cassino Hospital (Cassino, Italy). Her research explores spatial cognition across the lifespan in both healthy and clinical populations, focusing on how individual differences affect performance in navigational tasks — topographic memory, environmental representation, travel planning and navigational strategies.

Her team combines neuropsychological testing, brain imaging and virtual reality to understand spatial orientation and its disorders, including developmental topographical disorientation. She completed her doctoral studies at Sapienza and at IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia in Rome, in the groups of Cecilia Guariglia and Luigi Pizzamiglio, followed by post-doctoral fellowships at the Collège de France (with Alain Berthoz) and the Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris (with Michel Baulac).

Until January 2020 she was Associate Professor of Life, Health and Environmental Sciences at the University of L'Aquila. She leads the lab as group leader and is a member of the Di.Vi.Na. (Visuo-spatial and Navigation disorders) Laboratory directed by Cecilia Guariglia at IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome. She belongs to several scientific societies in general psychology and neuropsychology and publishes regularly in neuroscience.