M. Ida Gobbini
Papers
1
Total Citations
117
H-Index
1
About
Dr. M. Ida Gobbini is a leading cognitive neuroscientist whose work has fundamentally shaped our understanding of the social brain. Her research focuses on the neural mechanisms underlying face perception, social cognition, and the critical distinction between animate and inanimate agents. In her highly influential 2010 fMRI study, cited over 117 times, Gobbini and her team demonstrated that perceiving emotional expressions from human faces versus robotic faces engages distinct neural systems. This seminal work revealed that while both stimuli activate core face-processing regions, only human faces recruit networks associated with mentalizing and theory of mind, providing a neural basis for our sense of agency. Her contributions have been pivotal in disentangling how the brain processes identity, emotion, and social intent, with implications for understanding autism spectrum disorders and human-robot interaction. Gobbini’s elegant experimental designs continue to inspire new generations of researchers exploring the intersection of face processing and social neuroscience, cementing her legacy as a pioneer in mapping the neural architecture of human social perception.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Distinct Neural Systems Involved in Agency and Animacy Detection117 citations · 2010