The study of consciousness and the mind both in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy always fascinated me. And since I have never been one to shy away from a challenge, the so called 'hard problem' of understanding the emergence of consciousness from sensory perception particularly captivated my attention. I am interested in using neurophysiological tools to investigate cognitive and philosophical theories of consciousness. In my free time, I still seek challenging problems as a rock climber, a bike mechanic, djembe percussionist and didgeridoo player.
Research Projects:
2020 - 2022: I worked as a Research Assistant at the Cognition & Emotion Lab with Prof Tatler, Dr Chu and Dr Ioannidou on a Leverhulme project investigating how gesture production facilitates spatial problem-solving and whether this gestural benefit is transferable and durable. I used mobile eye-tracking technology and coded participants’ non-verbal behaviours to understand how hand gestures can support problem-solvers’ working memory and attention while tackling mental rotation tasks.
2020 - 2021: Under the supervision of Dr Chakravarthi, Dr Martinovic and Dr Reuther I worked as a Research Assistant at the Consciousness, Attention & Perception Lab (CAPLAB) on a BBSRC project which, in a series of EEG and psychophysical experiments, aimed at building a unitary framework of low and mid-level visual processing across the lifespan. Using variations of the same stimulus we defined and contrasted in each participant their perceptive fields (masking), integration fields (crowding) and association fields (grouping).
2019-2020: I worked as a research assistant in the Perception and Visual Attention lab of the Univeristy of Aberdeen under the supervision of Dr Søren Andersen and Dr Nika Adamian. The project aims at developing a quantitative (drift diffusion) model of selective visual attention which would link electrophysiological measurement of stimulus processing in the visual cortex (using Steady State Visually Evoked Potentials) with behavioural outcomes (accuracy and reaction time). Attention selection was measured using variants of the classical Posner cuing paradigm where participants were asked to identify coherent motion within random dot kinematograms by paying attention to various stimuli features (color, orientation, location, etc.).
2017-2018: I carried out my Master of Research project at the CAPLAB under the supervision of Dr Rama Chakravarthi. Neuroscience is a rather new player in the debate about free will. Interestingly, philosophers have by large ignored their findings on the basis that the type of free will studied in cognitive neuroscience is simply irrelevant to the real debate. In this project I started the process of bridging the gap between these two fields, by adapting to the EEG paradigm generally used to study free will (Libet, Gleason,Wright & Pearl, 1983). The aim was to contrast free decisions on the classical Libet-paradigm (motor decisions) versus decisions carrying meaning and consequences (moral decisions).
2009-2012: During my undergrad I volunteered at the CEMLAB where I learnt to run EEG studies under the supervision of Dr Kevin Allan. For my honours project I looked at the activation of the ‘self-area’ of the brain (mPFC) when participants empathised with someone who was either similar or dissimilar to them. The study was an adaptation of an fMRI study (Mitchell, Banaji & Macrae, 2005) and attempted to replicate the effects found using EEG methodology.
2020 - 2022: I worked as a Research Assistant at the Cognition & Emotion Lab with Prof Tatler, Dr Chu and Dr Ioannidou on a Leverhulme project investigating how gesture production facilitates spatial problem-solving and whether this gestural benefit is transferable and durable. I used mobile eye-tracking technology and coded participants’ non-verbal behaviours to understand how hand gestures can support problem-solvers’ working memory and attention while tackling mental rotation tasks.
2020 - 2021: Under the supervision of Dr Chakravarthi, Dr Martinovic and Dr Reuther I worked as a Research Assistant at the Consciousness, Attention & Perception Lab (CAPLAB) on a BBSRC project which, in a series of EEG and psychophysical experiments, aimed at building a unitary framework of low and mid-level visual processing across the lifespan. Using variations of the same stimulus we defined and contrasted in each participant their perceptive fields (masking), integration fields (crowding) and association fields (grouping).
2019-2020: I worked as a research assistant in the Perception and Visual Attention lab of the Univeristy of Aberdeen under the supervision of Dr Søren Andersen and Dr Nika Adamian. The project aims at developing a quantitative (drift diffusion) model of selective visual attention which would link electrophysiological measurement of stimulus processing in the visual cortex (using Steady State Visually Evoked Potentials) with behavioural outcomes (accuracy and reaction time). Attention selection was measured using variants of the classical Posner cuing paradigm where participants were asked to identify coherent motion within random dot kinematograms by paying attention to various stimuli features (color, orientation, location, etc.).
2017-2018: I carried out my Master of Research project at the CAPLAB under the supervision of Dr Rama Chakravarthi. Neuroscience is a rather new player in the debate about free will. Interestingly, philosophers have by large ignored their findings on the basis that the type of free will studied in cognitive neuroscience is simply irrelevant to the real debate. In this project I started the process of bridging the gap between these two fields, by adapting to the EEG paradigm generally used to study free will (Libet, Gleason,Wright & Pearl, 1983). The aim was to contrast free decisions on the classical Libet-paradigm (motor decisions) versus decisions carrying meaning and consequences (moral decisions).
2009-2012: During my undergrad I volunteered at the CEMLAB where I learnt to run EEG studies under the supervision of Dr Kevin Allan. For my honours project I looked at the activation of the ‘self-area’ of the brain (mPFC) when participants empathised with someone who was either similar or dissimilar to them. The study was an adaptation of an fMRI study (Mitchell, Banaji & Macrae, 2005) and attempted to replicate the effects found using EEG methodology.
Future publications to be added here
