Elena Festa, PhD
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Affiliation(s):
Brown University
ORCID URL:
Areas of Interest:
Alzheimer’s disease，mild cognitive impairment, neurocognitive markers
Biography & Research:
I am a cognitive neuroscientist with research interests in perception, attention and memory in both neurologically-intact individuals and patients with neurocognitive disorders. I received my B.A. in Psychology from the College of the Holy Cross and my Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology with emphasis in visual psychophysics from Brown University. I then completed my postdoctoral training in Cognitive Neuropsychology with Dr. William Heindel, and am currently a Lecturer in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistics and Psychological Sciences at Brown University. I am particularly interested in understanding the neurocognitive mechanisms mediating the integration and segregation of perceptual information, and how these mechanisms interact with attentional and memory processes. I use a variety of methodologies to address these issues, including psychophysical and behavioral techniques, neuropsychological investigations of brain-damaged populations and, more recently, noninvasive imaging techniques within both normal and brain-damaged populations. In addition to studying patient populations as model systems for understanding the neural systems mediating normal cognitive function, my research is also concerned with the development of novel neurocognitive markers for detecting and assessing Alzheimer's disease and other neurological disorders, as well as other applied research projects addressing real-world issues such as age-related driving impairments.
