Matteo Carandini (born 1967) is a neuroscientist who studies the visual system.

He is currently a professor at University College London, where he co-directs the Cortical Processing Laboratory with Kenneth D Harris.

[1][2] Together with David Ferster he characterized the relationship between synaptic excitation, synaptic inhibition, membrane potential, and firing rate in visual cortex [3][4] and discovered that prolonged visual stimulation causes a tonic hyperpolarization in V1 neurons.

[9] More recent work concerns the way that non-visual information affects activity in the classical visual system, including the discovery that neurons in primary visual cortex encode bodily movements[10] and even information about an animal's location in space,[11][12] a property previously thought to be restricted to higher-order brain systems such as place cells.

Carandini has contributed to the development of Neuropixels probes,[13][14][15] and is a founding member of the International Brain Laboratory,[16] which uses this technology to study how brain activity subserves sensory discrimination.