Giulia was born in Terni, Italy. She obtained her bachelor in Psychology and master degree in Cognitive Neuroscience, both at the University of Rome La Sapienza. Her research interests lie on the neurobiology of behavior under normal conditions and diseases.
During her undegraduate research experience, she investigated learning strategies to target reward-associated memories in a mouse model of drug-seeking. She then completed her PhD studies at the University of Leicester, UK, at James McCutcheon's lab, where she investigated neural and cognitive substrates of dietary protein regulation in rats; in particular, she focused on the way in which low-protein diet influences food choices, and the role of the mesolimbic dopamine system. Currently, she is a postdoc at the Italian Institute of Technology, Genova, in Francesco Papaleo's lab, where she studies the role of neuron-microglia crosstalk in social behavior in mouse lines of genetic syndromes.
To research these topics, Giulia has employed several behavioral paradigms in rodents, together with state-of-the-art in vivo neurophysiological measurements, pharmacological manipulations and ex vivo analysis, to determine links between brain circuit activity and behavior.
