Silvia Bernardi earned her M.D. from the University of Florence Medical School in Italy where she graduated magna cum laude. She subsequently pursued post-graduate training in psychiatry in Italy, as well as research in the cognitive regulation of emotions from a biological standpoint in humans utilizing fMRI, MRS, TMS and DBT. This work resulted in a number of publications, and it deepened her desire to understand the biology that underlies human cognition. This interest brought her to the USA where she repeated her residency in psychiatry at Columbia University and simultaneously started performing research using non-human primate electrophysiology with Dr. Daniel Salzman. Her research focuses on in-vivo physiology of high-level cognitive processes, such as abstraction and generalization. When these cognitive functions go awry, a variety of psychiatric symptoms, such as social anxiety and paranoia, become exacerbated. Her research has been supported by several competitive awards, including the AADPRT Brain Scholar Fellowship, the Samuel Perry award, the APA Research Fellowship, and a NARSAD Young Investigator Award.
