Our methods
Our methods
Meet the team
We are a research group at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (School of Clinical Medicine), and Department of Psychology (School of Biological Sciences), at the University of Cambridge
Programme Leader
Alex Woolgar
I am Professor of Integrative and Systems Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology, and a Programme Leader at, and Deputy Director of, the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge. I am fascinated by how the firing of billions of cells in our brains gives rise to our ability to perceive, think, and act. I especially want to understand the brain mechanisms that enable humans to pay attention - underpinning our ability to behave in complex, diverse, and flexible ways. To study this I draw on a range of human brain imaging and stimulation techniques, and develop approaches that push the limits of what we can ask about how the brain works. I am honoured to get to work with the brilliant bunch of scientists below.
Jade Jackson
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
I use a combination of neurostimulation (TMS) and neuroimaging (fMRI/MEG/EEG) techniques to investigate selective attention in the human brain. Previously I have looked at how task-relevant information is prioritised in the brain (e.g., Jackson et al. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2017; Jackson et al. Cortex, 2018), and the causal influence of disrupting this prioritisation on information coding across the brain (Jackson et al., Comms Bio, 2021). My current work focuses on the temporal dynamics of cognitive control, enhancement and inhibition, neurostimulation methods, and using neurostimulation combined with neuroimaging to causally link information coding to behaviour.
Elizabeth Michael
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Given the variability of our visual world, flexibility in how we process sensory information is a critical feature of efficient perception. My research focuses on how the visual system responds to different types of challening environment, using concurrnent brain stimulation and neuroimaging to identify the neural processes that support this behaviour. In parallel, I am interested in how the efficacy of interventions (e.g. behavioural training, brain stimulation) interacts with individual differences in neural architecture and function.
Hannah Rapaport
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
The aim of my research is to develop novel methods for assessing the language abilities of autistic people who have no or minimal spoken language.
I completed my PhD at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. My research involved using paediatric magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate the neural basis of sensory perception in autistic and neurotypical children.
I am passionate about doing research that will be of benefit to the autism community.
Moataz Assem
Wellcome Trust Early Career Fellow
Moataz investigates working memory brain circuits. His research aims to understand how we “actively” focus on limited information while also maintaining a broader "hidden" cognitive background. To this end, he utilizes innovative combinations of advanced techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), electrocorticography (ECoG), and precision functional MRI (fMRI), alongside anatomical data from non-human primates. This multimodal approach holds significant implications for circuit-based clinical interventions. Moataz is collaborating with top institutions globally, including Northwestern University, Washington University in St. Louis, the Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute/INSERM in Lyon, and the University of Oxford.
Dorian Minors
PhD Candidate
I'm interested in the kinds of simple neural mechanisms that may underpin intelligent behaviour. My previous work has explored how simple neural network properties inspired by the brain might facilitate higher order aptitudes, and specifically how honey bees might solve an abstract conceptual problem thus (Cope et al. PLOS Comp. Bio., 2018). My current project explores how a popular model of decision-making may allow us to distinguish analogous computations in the human brain using MEEG.
Nadene Dermody
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
My research will focus on uncovering the mechanisms through which information is exchanged between the "multiple-demand" (MD) network and more specialised regions, such as visual cortex. While the MD regions have been shown to selectively and flexibly represent task-relevant information moment- to-moment, how these regions interact with domain-specific regions to give rise to goal-directed behaviour is not yet known. My current project aims to contribute to our understanding of this by combining MEG and fMRI data, using multivariate pattern analysis techniques, to derive a spatially and temporally resolved account of how and where information is exchanged throughout the brain.
Runhao Lu
PhD Candidate
A distributed "multiple-demand" (MD) network across the frontoparietal brain regions is thought to be crucial for human intelligent behaviours because of its incredible function to flexibly and adaptively process task-relevant information. Although this network is commonly co-activated during demanding tasks, potential functional differentiation among MD regions have long been discussed but no clear consensus yet. My research aims to use M/EEG, concurrent TMS-fMRI and TMS-EEG to causally examine the distinct contributions of the individual MD regions. In particular, I ask whether these regions work differently in terms of enhancement vs inhibition during selective processing of visual information.
Yuanjun Kong
PhD Candidate (Visiting)
In daily life, people often select a task-relevant target from the surrounding distractors, for which visual attentional selection is required. My previous work has focused on the neural mechanisms underlying visual attentional selection and distractor suppression using EEG (Zhao et.al, 2023). In addition, the auditory system always monitors other inputs and detect changes to enable attentional shifts toward unexpected events. I’m also interested in the relationship between visual attentional selection and auditory change detection from a cross-modal perspective in healthy and psychiatric populations.
PhD Candidate
Yuena Zheng
We live in a world flooded with information, yet our cognitive resources are limited, meaning that only a small amount of information is attended to and processed in depth over a period of time. I am interested in the neural mechanisms behind this selective attention, especially for the top-down control dominated by the PFC and driven by the current task goal. My current project aims to use MEG and computational modelling to investigate the dynamic neural representation of the PFC in the presence of visual competition and the information flow between the PFC and the visual cortex during this process.
Sichao Liu
Visiting Research Fellow (Swedish Research Council - Vetenskapsrådet)
Roboticists are making use of insights from neuroscience and brain science to build better performing robots with human-like intelligence and autonomy. As a nascent research domain, the fusion of brain science, artificial intelligence and robotics represents a neuroengineering approach. My research is focused on using brain-computer interfaces to forge a direct and online communication between brain and computer/robot, developing artificial intelligence algorithms-driven decoders to reveal the patterns under neural activities (e.g., EEG and MEG), and finally precisely interpreting human thoughts into commands that robots can understand for the assistance of human daily activities and advanced applications in multiple fields.
PhD Candidate
Chentianyi Yang
It is estimated that 30% of children with autism are minimally verbal. Traditional clinical tools have struggled to distinguish the exact stages of linguistic or motor processing at which they have difficulties to express their thoughts through speaking. In my project, I will tackle this problem by investigating the mathematical functions of the brain using cortical entrainment. By analysing brain imaging data (e.g. EEG and MEG) and the predictions of automatic speech recognition models, I will bring new insights into the pathways of language processing for both autistic and neurotypical brains.
Isabelle Woods Rogan
Research Assistant
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) has been hugely important in mapping out the causal role of different brain regions in affecting behaviour. Using TMS in combination with imaging techniques can help us understand the induced changes in the brain which affect behaviour. In particular, I am using TMS concurrent with EEG (electroencephalography) to evaluate the efficacy of control conditions used commonly with TMS such as the sham coil, as well as to better understand the role of frontoparietal networks in visual attention.
Lab Alumni
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Erin Goddard (ARC DECRA, University of New South Wales, Sydney)
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Amanda Robinson (ARC DECRA, University of Sydney)
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Nathan Caurana (Macquarie University, Sydney)
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Kimberley Weldon (University of Minnesota)
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Annelli Janssen (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)
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Catriona Scrivener (University of Edinburgh)
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Lydia Barnes (University of New South Wales, Sydney)
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Hamid Karimi-Rouzbahani (ARC DECRA, Mater, Brisbane)
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Christopher Whyte (University of Sydney)
Collaborators
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Anina N. Rich (Macquarie University, Sydney)
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John Duncan (University of Cambridge)
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Eva Feredoes (University of Reading)
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Jason Mattingley (Queensland Brain Institute)
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Nicholas Badcock (University of Western Australia)
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Andrew Thwaites (University College London)