Dr. Altavini studied Biology and earned a Master’s degree in Animal Biology from the University of Brasilia, in Brazil. After earning his Master’s degree he moved to Natal, where he received his PhD in neuroscience from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil. His research was focused on patterns of spontaneous activity on early visual areas in the brain. He found that deactivation of those areas in one hemisphere caused a disruption in temporal activity patterns on the other brain hemisphere, although spatial activity patterns remained mostly intact. Such results suggest that long range connections in the visual system have an important role on how the brain tries to predict visual stimuli. Currently working with Dr. Charles Gilbert at The Rockefeller University, Dr. Altavini is investigating how objects are represented across the visual system. Part of their research is also to understand how expectation about visual stimuli, i.e. the prediction that specific objects might appear in the visual scene, changes the way neurons process visual information.
