You can also find my publications on Scholar. Here is a list of 10+ accepted abstracts for international conferences.

For any request or further information contact me at demetrio[dot]ferro[at]upf[dot]edu.

Peer-reviewed publications

2025

A closed-loop model for the coordination of gaze control and decision-making
Demetrio Ferro, Tianming Yang, Rubén Moreno Bote
Cognitive, Computational Neuroscience (CCN), 2025; PDF: 📄CCNeuro
This work introduces a closed-loop model linking gaze behavior with value-based decision making.
Visual input drives competing decision populations, which guide gaze shifts that feed back into the decision process.
Simulations capture key behavioral dynamics, offering a framework to study how gaze shapes neural and decision-related activity.

Decision-making reference point biases in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex
Demetrio Ferro, Habiba Azab, Benjamin Y. Hayden, Rubén Moreno Bote
Cognitive, Computational Neuroscience (CCN), 2025; PDF: 📄CCNeuro
In proximity of a jackpot, subjects perform choices faster and more accurately, reflecting a fundamental shift in their evaluation strategy.
The value of alternative choice options is referenced to a cumulative tokens count that leads to jackpot achievement upon reaching a fixed threshold.
Neural activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex tracked this reference-dependent shift, revealing a neural basis for reward proximity in decision-making.

2024

Gaze-centered gating, reactivation, and reevaluation of economic value in orbitofrontal cortex
Demetrio Ferro, Tyler Cash-Padgett, Maya Zhe-Wang, Benjamin Y. Hayden, Rubén Moreno Bote
Nature Communications, 15:6163, 2024
DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-50214-2; Data and code: repository; PDF: 📄NatComms, bioRxiv ResearchSquare
Gaze behavior strongly influences decision making during economic choices.
Looking at the screen locations where options are or were presented activates or reactivates their value encoding in orbitofrontal cortex.
This reactivation correlates with upcoming choices, indicating that gaze plays an active role in reevaluating internal representations.

2023

The role of gaze for value encoding and recollection in orbitofrontal cortex
Demetrio Ferro, Anna Rifé Mata, Tyler Cash-Padgett, Maya Zhe-Wang, Benjamin Y. Hayden, Rubén Moreno Bote
Cognitive, Computational Neuroscience (CCN), 2023
DOI:10.32470/CCN.2023.1122-0; PDF: 📄CCNeuro
Gaze is drawn more to valuable options and predicts choice outcomes.
Orbitofrontal cortex activity enhances the encoding for fixated locations and suppression of alternatives.
These findings suggest that gaze supports internal deliberation by modulating neural value signals.

2021

Directed information exchange between cortical layers in macaque V1 and V4 and its modulation by selective attention
Demetrio Ferro, Jochem van Kempen, Michael Boyd, Stefano Panzeri, Alexander Thiele
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118 (12), e2022097118, 2021
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2022097118; Data and code: repository; PDF: 📄PNAS, bioRxiv
This work maps how visual and attentional information propagate within and between cortical areas V1 and V4 at laminar resolution.
Results show interlaminar and interareal circuit motifs, attention-related shift in the gamma-band spectral peak, and increased high-frequency power.
Attention reduced local communication within V1 but enhanced both feedforward and feedback signaling across areas, especially in the gamma band.

2016

Nearest neighbour search using binary neural networks
Demetrio Ferro, Vincent Gripon, Xiaoran Jiang.
International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), IEEE, 5106-5112, 2016
DOI:10.1109/IJCNN.2016.7727873; PDF: 📄IEEE
Nearest neighbor search is a common task in computer vision and pattern recognition whose complexity grows with data dimensionality.
The method proposed here combines Product Quantization with neural networks to outperform state-of-the-art methods both in efficiency and scalability,
achieving about 95% reduction in classification on MNIST dataset, and 77% reduction in nearest neighbor search on TEXMEX SIFT1M dataset.

Preprints and other publications

2025

Accumulation of virtual tokens towards a jackpot reward enhances performance and value encoding in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex
Demetrio Ferro, Habiba Azab, Benjamin Y. Hayden and Rubén Moreno-Bote
bioRxiv, 2025. - Under review 📝
DOI: 10.12751/g-node.1kkrw6; Data and code: repository; PDF: 📄bioRxiv

2023

Model of gaze-centered activation and reactivation of value encoding in orbitofrontal cortex
Demetrio Ferro, Benjamin Y. Hayden and Rubén Moreno-Bote
Ebrains Knowledgegraph, 2023.
DOI: 10.12751/g-node.72yf9s; Data and code: repository

Gaze-centered gating and re-activation of value encoding in orbitofrontal cortex
Demetrio Ferro, Tyler Cash-Padgett, Maya Zhe-Wang, Benjamin Y. Hayden, Rubén Moreno Bote
bioRxiv, 2023
DOI: 10.1101/2023.04.20.537677; Data and code: repository; PDF: 📄bioRxiv

2020

Directed information exchange between cortical layers in macaque V1 and V4 and its modulation by selective attention
Demetrio Ferro, Jochem van Kempen, Michael Boyd, Stefano Panzeri, Alexander Thiele
bioRxiv, 2020
DOI: 10.1101/2020.06.09.142190; PDF: 📄bioRxiv

2019

Effects of attention on visual processing between cortical layers and cortical areas V1 and V4
Demetrio Ferro, University of Trento, Institutional Research Information System (IRIS), 1-172, 2019
DOI:10.15168/11572_246290; PDF: 📄IRIS