Educated At: University of Rome La Sapienza, Laurea cum
laude, Experimental Psychology, 2000; University of Rome La
Sapienza, Perfezionamento, Cognitive Psychology and Neural Networks,
2001
Research Interests: Visual perception, attention, psychophysics,
and cognitive neuroscience
Current Research: I am currently investigating the mechanisms
by which spatial covert attention affects contrast sensitivity at
attended and unattended locations by combining psychophysical and
imaging (fMRI) techniques.
Publications:
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.
Franco
"L'il Pants" Pestilli- graduate student