Research

Many studies have been conducted on muscular fatigue. Muscular force production is mainly controlled by two phenomena: the recruitment of additional motor units (MUs) and the increase of firing rate of the already active MUs. These phenomena happen in different proportions in different muscles. Specifically, in some muscles the recruitment of new MUs can be stopped at about 50% of the maximal force, while in others it can be observed until the maximal voluntary contraction force.

Depression is the third leading contributor to global diseases, and depressive mood state is also considered to be strictly related to the onset or worsening of a severe primary somatic disease. Our research focuses on early assessment of human mental health through analysis of behavioral and physiological signals, also devising ad-hoc cutting-edge, advanced biomedical signal processing and artificial intelligence techniques.

This research activity is focused on

1) Developing Inhomogeneous Point-Process Models of human heartbeat dynamics

2) Extend the framework including nonlinear dynamics

3) Extend the framework including multivariate dynamics (e.g., respiration, blood pressure, etc.)

This activity is carried out in strict collaboration with Prof. Riccardo Barbieri (Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, and Mass. General Hospital, Boston, USA), and Prof. Luca Citi (University of Essex, Colchester, UK)