Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (Italy) • My long-term interest is to understand the formation of brain circuits in typical development and in models of neurodevelopmental disorders. My approach is to combine electrophysiological and imaging techniques with molecular studies. My group has a longstanding expertise in such experiments on cortical plasticity in mice and we are fully equipped to carry them out here in my laboratory. We routinely use electrophysiology, optical and two-photon imaging to characterize structural and functional plasticity. My work has mainly been focused on the visual system, in which I had identified in 2002 that perineuronal nets (PNNs) are a brake for ocular dominance plasticity maturing at the end of the critical period. This paper opened the field of PNNs in plasticity (commented in PNAS by the Nobel prize winner Roger Tsien in 2013) and has also been influential in the field of Rett Syndrome (RTT) (papers by the groups of Shea, Fagiolini, Dudek and Zhuang). For these studies I received the international Schellenberg Award from the IRP/IFP in Geneva. My prominent role in this field is also shown by the invitation to make a commentary in Science (2009) and a review in Nature Neuroscience Reviews. In parallel, I elucidated the role of BDNF and important signaling epigenetic processes involving microRNAs, DNA methylation, MeCP2 and histone postranslational modifications in experience-dependent development of the visual cortex. This work was published in high impact journal, such as Science, Cell, Neuron, Nature Neuroscience. I have last-authored many papers on RTT and CDKL5 deficiency syndrome (CDD) characterizing the alterations present in the mouse models at synaptic level. I also coordinated research projects on CDD funded by private Foundations such as Telethon, LouLou foundation, and the International foundation for CDKL5 research. I have discovered that CDKL5 mice display visual deficits depending on CDKL5 action in visual cortical cells and he characterized the natural history of the deficit. Moreover, I discovered a selective stability deficit of dendritic spines using in vivo 2-photon imaging and alteration in glutamatergic synaptic transmission and plasticity. I am regularly invited to the international meetings and forums on CDD and has organized symposia at international meetings on this disease (IBRO 2019, CDKL5 Asia meeting Tokyo 2019).