Estetica e metafisica in Schiller. Dalla spontaneità alla mediazione

This doctoral thesis examines the development of the relationship between nature and reason in Friedrich Schiller’s philosophical work, with particular attention to the metaphysical implications of his aesthetics, through which his mediating position between Kantian philosophy and German Idealism takes shape. Within Schiller’s philosophical writings, two main stages can be identified in the evolution of the relationship between nature and reason. In his essays on beauty and grace of the 1790s...

Le caratteristiche e le competenze per sviluppare la valutazione trasformativa nei sistemi di gestione della qualità integrati nell’Higher Education

Neuromodulation to Promote Upper Limb Recovery After Stroke: Clinical and Preclinical Insights Into Cerebellar Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Combined With Robotic or Motor Training

Introducing and Refining Language in Vision Models

This thesis investigates how to extend the role of language within multimodal artificial intelligence, moving from its initial grounding in visual systems toward improved usability in representation, evaluation, and generative control. While vision-and-language models (VLMs) have achieved impressive capabilities, they still struggle with two key challenges: integrating language into domains that traditionally rely on purely visual or sensory information, and effectively leveraging the full ex...

From Words to Diagnosis: Exploring the Predictive Potential of Language Competence and Implicit Learning in Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is traditionally considered a motor disorder, but current medical research increasingly adopts a systemic perspective on this condition, acknowledging that non-motor symptoms are also present. Albeit more subtle, they precede motor symptoms in the time course of disease progression. For this reason, focusing on non-motor symptoms is critical to accelerate disease detection and might represent a paradigm shift in PD diagnosis, which is currently clinical- and motor-bas...

Exploring the potential of e-Health-based multimodal interventions for the management of chronic non-cancer pain in older adults

Nanoparticle-based extracellular vesicles and stem cells: labelling, imaging and safety assessment

Nanoparticles (NPs) are transforming biomedical research thanks to their unique physicochemical properties, which enable precise interactions with biological systems and new tracking applications in regenerative therapy. This thesis investigates the use of NPs, specifically iron oxide and gold NPs, in combination with stem cells and extracellular vesicles (EVs) to optimize the non-invasive tracking of those therapeutic agents in preclinical models. Experiments in vitro and in vivo wer...

Un’idea di storia dell’arte. La metodologia storico-artistica di Max Dvořák (1874-1921) attraverso le lezioni di storia dell’arte barocca all’Università di Vienna

The Vienna School of Art History has played a pivotal role in shaping art history as a scientific discipline and in proposing new areas of analysis. One of its members, Max Dvořák (1874-1921), has contributed significantly to the development of a new scientific methodology, particularly in describing the metamorphosis this methodology underwent from the beginning of the 19th century to the 20th. This aspect of his thought has been overlooked by Italian historiography, which has concentrated m...

Motor resonance in functional movement disorders: unravelling repertoire-congruent mechanisms of action observation

Functional Movement Disorders (FMDs) are a subtype of Functional Neurological Disorders defined by abnormal involuntary movements such as weakness, tremor, dystonia, gait disturbances, myoclonus, or parkinsonism. These clinical features are typically inconsistent with recognized patterns of organic neurological disease and often fluctuate or change markedly under distraction. FMDs are increasingly conceptualized as disorders of network-level dysfunction, in which aberrant predictive coding, i...