People

My research focuses on functional and structural plasticity with learning and rehabilitation in both humans and rodents.

I use behavioural training interventions and test how factors such as performance level or amount of practice influence brain changes at a functional, structural and neurochemical level in humans (fMRI, rs-fMRI, DTI and MR spectroscopy).

Additionally, I use real-time neurofeedback fMRI to test if endogenous brain activity modulation can lead to functional brain changes and behavioural improvements in healthy participants and chronic stroke survivors.

My preclinical work focuses on the underlying cellular mechanisms of brain plasticity, with a focus on white matter and myelination.

• Neuropsychological assessment of memory, attention and executive functions in the context of brain injury and healthy ageing.
• Cognitive rehabilitation interventions (eg Goal Management Training).
• Functional imaging of the effects of cognitive rehabilitation interventions.
• Treatment of mood disorders after stroke (music based interventions and positive psychotherapy).

As part of the UCIS Lab, I look at the combination of Neuroscience and Information Retrieval. My focus is on Information Overload.

My research is concerned with the processes of semantic cognition – i.e., the ways in which we (a) maintain a store of conceptual knowledge about objects, words and people and (b) use executive control processes to access this information in a flexible, task-appropriate manner. I explore this using a variety of techniques, including:

• Case-series neuropsychological investigations, primarily of patients with semantic dementia and semantic deficits following stroke
• Computational linguistic analyses (e.g., latent semantic analysis)
• Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in healthy subjects
• Functional neuroimaging studies
• Connectionist computational models