Sara Mazzini

Sara is a PhD student in the Neurobiology of Language Department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. She is originally from Italy, where she obtained a Bachelor in Psychology from the University of Bologna. Then, she moved to the Netherlands to study Cognitive Neuroscience at Maastricht University and she started her PhD in February 2021.

The neuroscience of language captured her interest while learning foreign languages and wondering how the brain processes all this information. During her master, she studied the neural mechanisms underlying language production, focusing on brain waves and the encoding of syntax.

For her PhD, she is investigating the role of neural synchrony in face-to-face communication, by studying communication in its natural context: multimodal social interactions. Are the brains of conversational partners synchronizing when communication is successful? Does neural synchrony play a role in integrating different sources of information, such as speech and gestures?

In her spare time, Sara enjoys cooking, working out and traveling.