Welcome to Dr. Federico Cassioli, new member of the department

Resilience is the capacity of individuals to resist and bounce back from a stressful and unfavorable event. It can be transmitted between parents and children to protect them from the development of psychological disorders. In contrast, stress can also be transmitted within families through various channels, including neural synchronization. TRIAD research, focusing on the bio-behavioral dynamics and contributors to the transmission of resilience in Belgian families with children aged 10-12 years, will focus on the observation of stress resistance between mother, father and child. The TRIAD research incorporates bio-behavioural family factors such as (epi-)genetic, physiological, endocrinological and climatic family patterns into the resilience study. It will study the spontaneous synchronization between parents’ and children’s social behavior and physiology when faced with emotional and stressful situations. Finally, the research aims to inform family resilience building programs to help families cope with the constant adaptations needed in everyday life to deal with changing and challenging situations.

The TRIAD project is financed by the Excellence in Science (EOS) funds of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (F.N.R.S.), in the framework of a consortium of researchers from five Belgian Universities, Mons, Louvain-La-Neuve, Leuven, Antwerp and Ghent. )

At the UMONS, Professor Mandy Rossignol is managing the project within the DYSTRESS research group. The studies conducted in this group, co-directed with Professor Sarah Galdiolo (Clinical Psychology Department), will focus on the intra- and inter-individual dynamics of stress and anxiety, using behavioral, physiological, and electrophysiological measures.

After welcoming Sara Scaletti (Ph.D. Student) in September in the same project, the Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology department of Pr. Laurent Lefebvre is now welcoming Dr. Federico Cassioli.

Born in Florence, Federico moved to Milan at 21 for his master’s and Ph.D. before coming to Mons. His Ph.D. project at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan (Department of Psychology) involved the development of multi-level paradigms to assess interindividual synchronization via the acquisition of central and peripheral electrophysiological, behavioral, and psychometric data.

Federico now joins our team as a post-doctoral fellow. In the Dystress project, he will study inter-brain connectivity in family dyads and triads.

More infos about his research on https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Federico-Cassioli