Stefano F. Cappa received his M.D. at the University of Milano, in which he completed his neurology training. He has held assistant professor and associate professor positions in Neurology and Neurological Rehabilitation at the University of Brescia. Since 1999 he is Professor of Neuropsychology at the Vita Salute S. Raffaele University in Milano, Italy and, from Nov 2000 to Nov 2009, Dean of Psychology. He is also Director of the Neurology Department of S. Raffaele Turro Hospital, Milano, Italy. He has spent research periods at Boston University, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at University of California San Diego, at the Medical Research Council Cyclotron Unit of Hammersmith Hospital in London and at the Max Planck Institut for Cognitive Neuroscience in Leipzig.

His main research interests are:

  • the investigations in linguistic aspects of aphasia, with a special emphasis on the neurological correlates of specific aspects of language impairment;
  • Alzheimer’s disease and dementia;
  • diagnosis, unusual neuropsychological features, and cognitive studies of memory disorders in dementia;
  • the application of functional imaging methods (positron emission tomography, functional magnetic resonance) to the study of cognitive function (in particular, language and semantic memory);
  • cognitive studies of disorders of space cognition and exploration, their neurological correlates and the variables affecting recovery.

Scientific publications

He has published more than 200 papers in refereed journals, as well as several books and book chapters, and has served in many Editorial Boards.

  1. Garibotto V, Borroni B, Kalbe E, Herholz K, Salmon E, Holtoff V, Sorbi S, Cappa SF, Padovani A, Fazio F, Perani D. Education and occupation as proxies for reserve in aMCI converters and AD: FDG-PET evidence. Neurology. 2008 Oct 21;71(17):1342-9.
  2. Gorno-Tempini ML, Brambati SM, Ginex V, Ogar J, Dronkers NF, Marcone A Perani D, Garibotto V, Cappa SF, Miller BL. The logopenic/phonological variant of primary progressive aphasia. Neurology. 2008 Oct 14;71(16):1227-34.
  3. Nicola Canessa, Francesca Borgo, Stefano F. Cappa, Daniela Perani, Andrea Falini, Giovanni Buccino, Marco Tettamanti and Tim Shallice The different neural correlates of action and functional knowledge in semantic memory: an fMRI study, Cerebral Cortex 2007 Jul 9.
  4. Cotelli, M., anenti R., Cappa SF, Geroldi C, Zanetti Rossini PM, Miniassi C Transcranial magnetic stimulation improves action naming in Alzheimer’s patients. Archives of Neurology 63. 1602-1604
  5. Rosa Manenti, Claudia Repetto, Simone Bentrovato, Elizabeth Bates and Stefano Cappa The effects of aging and Alzheimer’s Disease on semantic and gender priming Brain 127, 2299-2306