Valentina Cuccio

University of Parma, University of Messina

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About

Valentina Cuccio’s research sits at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience, psycholinguistics, and embodied cognition, with a primary focus on how language and action are intertwined in the human brain. Her most-cited work, “Language for action: Motor resonance during the processing of human and robotic voices” (2017, 21 citations), demonstrates that listening to human voices—compared to robotic ones—triggers motor resonance, revealing how the brain’s motor systems are engaged during speech perception. This finding underscores the embodied nature of language processing. In her fMRI study on “Communicative And Affective Components in Processing Auditory Vitality Forms” (2021, 12 citations), Cuccio explored how the emotional tone of spoken verbs (e.g., gentle or rude pronunciation) activates the dorso-central insula, a region linked to interoception and emotional awareness. She showed that this insular response is not merely a reaction to action verbs alone, but arises from the conjunction of action semantics and affective prosody, highlighting the brain’s integration of communicative and emotional cues. Cuccio’s work has significant implications for understanding social cognition, human-robot interaction, and the neural bases of communication, making her a key voice in the field of embodied language research.