Currently: Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Neuroscience - Columbia University
Hails From: Rome, Italy.
Educated At: Ph.D. in Psychology New York University,
M.A. in Experimental Psychology New York University, Laurea,
Experimental Psychology, University of Rome La Sapienza
Research Interests: Decision making, attention, reward, visual perception, fMRI, psychophysics, and modelling
Current Research: He is currently investigating: (1) the mechanisms by which attention
affects contrast response and sensitivity. (2) The influence on reward on Decision-Making and
Attention.
Publications:
Pestilli, F., Heeger, D.J., Carrasco, M., & Gardner, J. (in preparation)
Modeling the increase in fMRI response and contrast discrimination performance due to attention.
Pestilli, F., Heeger, D.J., Carrasco, M., & Gardner, J. (in preparation)
Interacting effects of attention and contrast adaptation on fMRI contrast response
and contrast sensitivity.
Pestilli, F., Montagna, B., Gardner, J., Heeger, D.J., & Carrasco, M. (in preparation)
Contrast adaptation potentiates the benefit of attention on contrast detection.
Montagna, B. Pestilli, F., & Carrasco, M. (in press) Attention trades off spatial acuity.
Pestilli, F., Ling, S., & Carrasco, M. (in press) A population-coding model of
attention’s influence on contrast response: estimating neural effects from psychophysical data. Vision Research
Pestilli, F., Viera, G., & Carrasco M. (2007) How do attention and adaptation affect contrast sensitivity? Journal of Vision, 7 (7), 1-12.
Pestilli, F., & Carrasco, M. (2005) Attention enhances contrast
sensitivity at cued and impairs it at uncued locations. Vision
Research, 45, 1867-1875.
Liu, T., Pestilli, F., & Carrasco, M. (2005) Transient attention
enhances perceptual performance and fMRI response in human visual
cortex. Neuron, 45, 469-477.
Conference presentations:
Pestilli, F., Ling, S., Carrasco, M. (2007, May) Attention and contrast: A model linking single-unit and psychophysical data. Vision Sciences Society, Sarasota, FL.
Pestilli F. & Carrasco M., (2006, August) Exogenous attention reduces the effect of contrast adaptation by increasing contrast sensitivity. European Conference on Visual Perception, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Pestilli F. & Carrasco M., (2006, May) On the interaction between covert attention and contrast adaptation. Vision Sciences Society, Sarasota, FL. http://journalofvision.org/6/6/604/
Liu, T., Pestilli, F., & Carrasco, M. (2004) Transient
covert attention increases fMRI response in human visual cortex.
Poster presented at the 34th Annual Meeting of the Society for
Neuroscience, San Diego, California.
Carrasco, M., Liu, T., & Pestilli, F. (2004) Transient attention
increases performance and neuronal activity in an orientation
discrimination task. Paper presented at the 27th Annual Meeting
of the European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP), Budapest,
Hungary.
Pestilli, F., Talgar, C.P. & Carrasco, M. (2004, May). Sustained
attention enhances letter identification without affecting channel
tuning. Vision Sciences Society, Sarasota, FL.
Pestilli, F. and Carrasco, M. Contrast sensitivity is enhanced
at cued and impaired at uncued locations. (Vision ScienceS 2003).
Pestilli, F., Gadomski, A. M., Olivetti Belardinelli, M. Route
Spatial Representation of Decisional Problems: Application of
TOGA Framework to the Modeling of Cognitive Agent. Proceedings
of ICSC 2000 - International Conference on Spatial Cognition:
Scientific Research and Applications, Cognitive Processing -
International Quarterly of Cognitive Science 1: 27, Rome: Pabst,
2000.
Ferlazzo, F., Pestilli, F., Olivetti Belardinelli, M. Verifica
della dissociazione degli effetti dei meridiani verticali visivo
e centrato sulla testa in un paradigma di Posner Proceedings
of Capri Novantanove - National Congress of the Italian Association
of Experimental Psychology, Capri: Aip, 1999.
Other interests: philosophy, literature, music, traveling,
running, biking.
Franco
"L'il Pants" Pestilli