Dr. Bernardi graduated in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Pisa Medical School, where he also obtained his Ph.D. in Neuroscience. In 2012 he moved to the United States, where he spent more than 2 years at the Center for Sleep and Consciousness of the University of Wisconsin (Madison, WI), working on the study of the behavioral and cognitive correlates of physiological states characterized by the coexistence of sleep-like and wake-like brain activity patterns. Since 2015, he spent over 16 months at the Center for Investigation and Research on Sleep of the Lausanne University Hospital (Lausanne, Switzerland), where he extended his research to the clinical field. The research activity of Dr. Bernardi focuses on the study of the interactions between experience-dependent brain plasticity and sleep in humans. In particular, his work investigates how sleep is influenced, and in turn influences, important functions such as learning, memory and emotional regulation, as well as brain development during childhood. This research is performed through the combination of multiple modern brain imaging methodologies, including magnetic resonance imaging and high-density electroencephalography. Other research interests concern the study of the neural correlates of consciousness, the functional substrates of sleep disorders, and the definition/optimization of approaches for the study of brain activity during both wakefulness and sleep in physiological and pathological conditions.
