The project of the PhD course aims to recruit and train researchers with up-to-date skills and abilities to carry out autonomous, original and innovative scientific activity in different areas of neuroscience, through the acquisition of scientific bases and methodological/technological skills for the multidisciplinary study of the nervous system, from molecular functioning to cognitive and clinical neuroscience, working on the human being or on animal models. Each student will be followed by one or more tutors and will participate in the activities of one or more research groups. The training and research activities of the program will be divided into the following three macro-areas, also including cross-cutting themes, methodologies and technologies:

- Basic and computational neuroscience: Study of the central and peripheral nervous system in humans using neuroanatomy, neuropharmacology, molecular and cellular biology, electrophysiology, behavioral, neurocomputational and brain imaging techniques. Rodents, and cell models, including induced pluripotent stem cells and organoids are also used. This subject area has a strong interdisciplinary footprint, offering PhD students the possibility to integrate neuroscientific knowledge on the cellular and molecular bases of physiology, pathology and therapies of the central nervous system with integrative approaches at the behavioral and neurophysiological level up to the development and validation of computational methods and models.

- Clinical neuroscience: Study of topics related to clinical research in the field of neurological and psychic disorders in the life span; particular importance will be given to genetic and epigenetic risk factors analyzed using targeted experimental approaches, as well as broad-spectrum omics methods. Additional approaches include electrophysiology,e tracking Finally, the different types of therapeutic intervention will themselves be studied as predictors of response or efficacy/safety, for example in reference to non-invasive brain stimulation in its most recent uses in the behavioral and neuroevolutionary field or with respect to psycho-social rehabilitation.

- Cognitive neuroscience and psychology: study of cognitive functions in the human being through the identification of mental operations and the neural substrate at their base, through behavioral and test methodologies, and through psychophysiological and neuroimaging techniques, with normal subjects or neuropsychological patients. The neurocognitive mechanisms involved in mental and psychological abilities such as language, personality, attention and executive functions, representation of space, and in the relationships between perception and action are studied. Other lines of research are oriented to social neuroscience and include the study of expression, recognition and regulation of emotions, empathy and perception of pain, the ability to represent the other by himself (theory of mind) and to carry out shared actions.

The specific research topics of the course are addressed with multidisciplinary methodologies transversal with respect to the macro-areas listed above according to the objectives of the research lines. They include:
- Study of the central and peripheral nervous system in physiological and pathological conditions (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, epilepsy, chronic pain, autism) with different models, from cell cultures to humans, using neuroanatomy techniques, neuropharmacology, molecular and cellular biology, electrophysiology, behavioral, computational and brain imaging.

- Study of neural correlates, biomarkers and endogenous (genetic and behavioral) and exogenous (environmental and socio-relational) risk factors in diseases of neurological and psychiatric interest, of the child, adolescent and adult. The main pathologies under study are: neurodegenerative and neuromuscular pathologies, epilepsy, narcolepsy, chronic pain, sleep disorders, neurodevelopmental disorders, schizophrenia, depressive and bipolar disorders, somatic symptom disorders, personality disorders and drug and behavioral addictions. Deepening of attachment processes, the effect of traumas, the development of mentalization in relation to the manifestation of the main psychic disorders and their treatment.

- Study of the relationship between cognitive-emotional functioning and neural-cerebral bases through standardized or ad hoc psychometric and neuropsychological tools that investigate mental functioning in conjunction with the detection of brain activity through psychophysiological and neuroimaging techniques.