Filomena Anelli

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About

Filomena Anelli is a cognitive neuroscientist whose research lies at the intersection of motor cognition, affordance theory, and developmental psychology. Her work explores how the human brain processes the potential for action—or "affordances"—embedded in everyday objects, with a particular focus on how dangerous stimuli modulate motor resonance. In her highly cited 2012 study, "Grasping the pain: Motor resonance with dangerous affordances" (74 citations), Anelli demonstrated that observing objects with harmful properties can inhibit or alter the motor responses typically evoked by graspable items, revealing a sophisticated neural mechanism for risk avoidance. This foundational work extended into comparative studies of human and robotic grasping, as seen in her 2012 paper on "Human and robotics hands grasping danger." Anelli’s contributions have advanced our understanding of how the motor system integrates sensory and emotional cues to guide behavior, with implications for robotics, rehabilitation, and developmental science. Her research is widely recognized for bridging cognitive neuroscience and real-world applications, making her a key voice in the study of embodied cognition and action perception.