Nilli Lavie, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
n.lavie@ucl.ac.uk
Field of research: Attention and Cognitive control
Projects are available in one of the four lines described below, as well as in other areas
of our research interests (developed together with the individual student).
1) Time perception and attention: establish a new phenomenon of blindness to time
under different types of processing load
2) Establishing the effects of motivation and reward on focused attention
3) Effects of attention on the pupil response
4) Establishing neural markers of “Inattentional deafness” using
Magnetoencephalography (MEG)
Current Research and Interests
My research group focuses on the psychological and neural mechanisms of attention and
distraction, cognitive control, visual awareness, working memory and emotion. We have
a special focus on investigating information processing capacity and the effects of
different types of information load on brain activity, cognitive function and task
performance, neural correlates of awareness and executive frontal control of attention and
behavior. We also study individual differences in attention abilities. To study these issues
we use behavioral experiments (and visual psychophysics) combined with functional
MRI, Magnetoencephalography (MEG), and measures of the eye pupil all in human
subjects.
PDF copies of papers from our lab and more information about our research can be found
on our web site: http://www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/lavielab
A few relevant papers:
Cartwright-Finch, U. and Lavie, N. (2007). The role of perceptual load in Inattentional
Blindness. Cognition, 102(3), 321-340
Macdonald, J. & Lavie, N. (2011) Visual perceptual load induces inattentional deafness.
Attention Perception & Psychophysics, 73(6), 1780-1789
Lavie, N. (2010) Attention, Distraction and Cognitive Control under Load. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 143-158.
Lavie, N. (2005) Distracted and confused?: selective attention under load. Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, 9, 75-82.