The CHBH Team

Professor Sarah Aldred is an exercise biochemist interested in oxidative stress. She is interested in how exercise can perturb redox homeostasis in both health and disease. Sarah has worked with young and old, and with those suffering from psychosis and schizophrenia, cardiovascular disease and dementia. 

Sarah is Head of the School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences.

Dr KyungMin An’s main interests are in neuroimaging studies on child development and children with developmental disorders. She is focusing on developmental trajectories of brain activity/rhythms across child development and neural characteristics in children with developmental disorders. To measure brain responses from children, she is applying non-invasive and child-friendly neuroimaging ...

Dr. Apps is a leading expert in the computational, cognitive and neural basis of motivation and social behaviour. More info about the labs work can be found here: www.MSN-lab.com

Professor Bagshaw's main interest is in developing and applying non-invasive neuroimaging methods to questions in clinical and behavioural neuroscience. Current work in the Multimodal Integration Group (MIG)focuses on using EEG-fMRI to understand the influence of ongoing brain activity on evoked and behavioural responses, and to examine the localisation and functional significance of ...

George is a respiratory physiologist with an interest in pulmonary blood flow and sleep disordered breathing. He is an expert in blood gas manipulation and he uses ultrasonography for non-invasive measurement of physiological variables. George is a dedicated and popular lecturer having received the Excellence in Teaching and Outstanding Teaching Award four times. 

Giovanni is an experimentalist whose activities spread over a diverse range of systems with quantum properties. His research include quantum simulations with ultracold atoms, the study of thermodynamics in the quantum regime, the development of highly charged ion clocks for detection of dark matter and dark energy, cavity quantum electrodynamics, and the development of quantum devices for brain ...

Professor Belli graduated from Tor Vergata University in Rome with a degree in Medicine and Surgery. He completed a doctoral degree (MD) on neurobiochemistry of brain ischaemia and reperfusion at Tor Vergata University and then moved to the UK in 1994.

He trained as a neurosurgeon at King’s College Hospital, Atkinson Morley’s Hospital, The National Hospital for Neurology and ...

Professor Kai Bongs was Director of the UK Quantum Technology Hub Sensors and Timing from 2014-2019 and Principal Investigator from 2019-2022. Professor Bongs helped to drive the translation of gravity sensors and ultra-precise clocks into technology and applications across a diverse number of sectors, including climate, communications, energy, transport and urban ...

Matthew is an academic psychiatrist and Director of the Institute for Mental Health at the University.  He is a leader in the field of early psychosis and in the philosophy and ethics of mental health.

Dr Chechlacz is broadly interested in understanding how variability in the neurochemical, structural and functional organisation of the brain affect cognitive functions and relates to individual differences in human behaviour and in susceptibility to cognitive ageing and mental health problems. Her work combines cognitive assessment of attentional functions with spherical deconvolution ...

Dr Chiou’s research focuses on studying motor cortical involvement in trunk control in older adults and in people living with spinal cord injury. Her work utilises neurophysiological measures, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, peripheral electrical stimulation, and electromyography, to investigate the control of movement and how it is affected or adapted with ageing and following a ...

Ela Claridge is an Emeritus Professor of Medical Image Analysis. She established a successful Medical Imaging and Image Interpretation Group which is internationally known for the development of novel computational image analysis methods and non-invasive light-based imaging. Her interdisciplinary research involves collaborations extending to medicine, biosciences, physics of image formation and ...

Professor Cook’s work investigates action and social cognition in typically developed adults and those with autism spectrum conditions.

With respect to action Professor Cook and her colleagues have shown that autistic adults move with subtly different kinematics compared to typical controls (Cook, Blakemore and Press, 2013, Brain). Such atypical kinematics can impact on the ...

The aim of Dr Cruse’s research is to improve clinical practice following severe brain injury through the application of methods from cognitive electrophysiology. By identifying residual neural and cognitive mechanisms, it is possible to improve the accuracy of diagnoses and prognoses, and gain a more accurate understanding of how the brain supports consciousness and cognition.

Dr Dauvermann’s research focusses on the identification of risk and resilience markers in young people who are at high risk of developing neurodevelopmental and mental health conditions, and is also interested in the characterisation of biopsychosocial prognostic markers of clinical and functional outcome. She uses cognitive neuroscientific and interdisciplinary methods to integrate ...

Dr De Brito is a psychologist and director of the Social, Cognitive, Affective, and Neuroscience (SCAN) lab. Research in the SCAN lab focuses on understanding the mechanistic interplay between the social, cognitive, affective, and neurocognitive factors implicated in the development and persistence of antisocial and aggressive behaviour. A second strand of research examines those aspects among ...

Professor Hamid Dehghani is Professor of Medical Imaging at the School of Computer Science and the Healthcare Technologies Institute (HTI). His research focusses on non-invasive imaging and measurement of physiological information from biological tissue.

As a part of his interdisciplinary work, Hamid is involved with the following University-wide activities:

• Doctoral Training Centre for ...

Dr Di Luca investigates the mechanisms of human perception using psychophysical methods and computational modeling. The goal of his research is to understand how the brain progressively builds the perception of the environment by picking up information through actions and by integrating sensations over time.

Personal website: http://massimilianodiluca.info/

Davinia Fernández-Espejo’s main goal is to understand how the brain supports consciousness and what goes wrong for patients to become entirely unaware after severe brain injury. She uses techniques such as MRI (structural and functional), tDCS, and behavioural approaches in both healthy volunteers and patients with a disorder of consciousness to test hypotheses about ...

Dr Steven Frisson’s research focuses on the on-line processing of natural language, mainly using the eyetracking methodology. He has investigated language at many different levels of processing, from how language users exploit low-level information (orthography, phonology) to how pragmatics affects text interpretation. He has carried out research with different populations, including ...

Dr Froemer studies the switches by which people flexibly adjust how they learn and make decisions, and how they set these switches according to their momentary goals and motivational states. To address these questions, she combines behavioral measures, computational modeling, eye-tracking, psychophysiological recordings and/or neuroimaging techniques. The long-term goal of her work is ...

Dr Galea is broadly interested in motor control. This ranges from the neural correlates of motor learning to stroke rehabilitation. At present, he is particularly interested in how reward/punishment influences our actions and can be used to alter the speed at which our motor system learns or retains new movements.

Personal website: www.josephgalea.weebly.com

Dr. Dietmar Heinke teaches statistics at the School of Psychology. His research focuses on interdisciplinary brain research integrating experimental work in psychology with theoretical/computational modeling work. for more information see his personal webpages.

He also is a member of the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robotics (CNCR).

Dr Hickey uses tools from cognitive neuroscience – fMRI, EEG, MEG, TES, eye-tracking, and drug challenge – to study how our prior experience of the world dictates the manner in which we sense and perceive it.

Professor Higgs is a researcher interested in the psychology of eating and the underlying biology.

Dr Nick Holmes runs The Hand Laboratory which studies the coordination and control of hand and body movements and the human somatosensory system, particularly the perception of touch on the hands. His main methods are transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), electromyography (EMG), motion tracking and psychophysics. He enjoys doing statistics and produces a science news podcast called the error ...

Ned’s research incorporates a range of techniques including non-invasive brain stimulation, electrophysiological recording, eye-tracking, neuroimaging and behavioural techniques. He uses these techniques to investigate how the brain controls movement and how it allows us to - seemingly effortlessly - learn new motor skills. His research is not only intended to help us understanding how the ...

Prof.  Ole Jensen is a word leading expert on applying magnetoencephalograpghy to study the human brain. In particular his work has focused on uncovering the mechanism role of neuronal oscillations for cognition. 

• Research group website

• Orcid ID: 0000-0001-8193-8348

Ali Khatibi is interested in the study of cognition and an expert in neuroimaging and the study of human spinal cord. His two lines of research is focused on the study of cognitive bias in the processing of pain and also pain interference with motor learning in human spinal cord.

Arkady Konovalov is a neuroeconomist interested in studying individual and social decision making using models of the choice process and value-based learning, applying methods of computational neuroscience such as response times modeling, fMRI, EEG, eye-tracking, and mouse-tracking.

Dr Kornysheva studies the physiological and informational processes underlying action planning and execution, sequencing and timing, as well as disorders of the latter. Her goal is to further basic understanding of skilled behaviour and develop entry-points for interventions that to boost learning and performance in patients and the healthy population. To address these goals her lab uses ...

Dr Anna Kowalczyk specialises in development of quantum sensors based on the interaction of the resonant light with atomic vapours of alkali atoms and in applications of Optically Pumped Magnetometers for biomedical diagnostics.

She has extensive experience in experimental atomic physics and optics, spectroscopy and metrology.

Andrea Krott studies the psychology of human language. Her early research investigated how we store and represent language rules and words in our minds and how children acquire those rules and words. More recently, she has investigated language as an ability that interacts with other cognitive abilities. She is interested in how general cognitive abilities such as attention and cognitive ...

Dr. Patricia Lockwood is a cognitive and social neuroscientist. She is head of the Social Decision Neuroscience Lab. Her work focuses on the neurocognitive foundations of social learning and decision-making across the lifespan and in psychiatric and neurological disorders.

Dr Sam Lucas is an integrative physiologist with a primary research interest in brain health; specifically he is interested in how cerebral blood flow is regulated in health and disease, and the resultant impact on brain function (e.g., neurophysiological and psychological/behavioural responses). His broader interests and expertise are in the areas of exercise and environmental physiology, as ...

Dr MacDonald’s research focuses on the behavioural, neurophysiological and genetic mechanisms of impulse control i.e. how we control our actions. She is especially interested in how these mechanisms may be influenced by dopamine dysregulation as seen in Parkinson’s disease and other dopamine-related disorders. She utilizes techniques such as non-invasive brain stimulation, genotyping, ...

Dr Tom Marshall combines neuroimaging, transcranial brain stimulation, and computational modelling to understand the function of neuronal oscillations in underpinning attention and decision making.

Dr Eduardo Martinez-Valdes is an expert in electrophysiology. His research utilizes advanced surface electromyography techniques to study the neuromuscular adjustments behind musculoskeletal disorders, exploring exercise interventions which could potentially improve neuromuscular function. 

Dr Mazaheri is an expert on the role of oscillations in cognition and behaviour. His research focuses on the neural interactions underlying different facets of  cognitive control in both the healthy and clinical populations.

Dr Craig McAllister has a passionate interest in understanding the neural mechanisms of human movement in both healthy and disease states. His current research utilises a combination of non-invasive brain stimulation techniques and neuroimaging methods to understand the role of rhythmic brain activity in motor and cognitive processes.

Dr Carmel Mevorach is a cognitive neuroscientist focusing on mechanisms of top-down attention control, which lie at the heart of various cognitive functions. His research also aims to unravel how individual factors (such as autistic traits or normal aging) mediate mechanisms of attention, including on the neural level.

Website: https://mevorach-lab.weebly.com/

Professor Miall has been studying sensorimotor control for about 35 years, from his PhD in locusts, to crayfish, primates and for about 20 years he has been working exclusively on human sensory and motor systems. He is particularly interested in the role of the cerebellum, in sensory motor learning and in predictive control, and the impact of somatosensory loss on movement and cognition.

His ...

Dr Isabel Morales-Muñoz is Assistant Professor in Psychology based at the Institute for Mental Health, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham. Her main area of research is to investigate risk factors for youth mental health, with a special focus on investigating the role of sleep problems in the development of mental health problems. Her current work is mainly focused on secondary ...

Dr Muhle-Karbe is a computational cognitive neuroscientist with a broad interest in the building blocks of higher cognitive functions. His work combines behavioural experimentation with brain imaging and computational modelling to interrogate how the brain controls cognitive processing for adaptive learning, memory, and decision-making.

Dr Mullinger is an expert in simultaneous EEG-fMRI. She focuses on understanding the sources of the EEG artefacts and how to reduce them at source. Using the best EEG-fMRI techniques available she investigates neurovascular coupling to better understand brain function.

See Dr Mullinger's Nottingham profile

Dr. Felipe Orihuela-Espina is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science.

He obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2005. Afterwards, he moved to Mexico where he was appointed lecturer at the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Mexico (UAEMex). He joined Imperial College as a research associate in 2007 and later in 2011 became postdoctoral ...

Dr Hyojin Park is an expert on neural oscillatory mechanisms associated with human speech and memory. Her PhD work focused on the functional role of brain oscillations and how they support network interactions (cross-frequency coupling) in attention and memory. Her current research is focused on the topic of audiovisual speech processing, integration, and communication.

View Hyojin Park’s ...

Andrew Peet is an NIHR Research Professor in paediatric neuro-oncology at the University of Birmingham and the Research Director of the NIHR 3T MRI Research Centre at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. He is a practicing paediatric oncologist. Professor Peet’s research focusses on the development and evaluation of novel MRI techniques for diagnosis, management and understanding childhood ...

Dr Andrew Quinn works on time-series analysis methods and software for quantifying oscillations in electrophysiological time series. He applies these methods to research questions around visual and auditory perception and how brain function changes across the lifespan and in neurodegenerative disorders.

Dr Reniers is a research psychologist investigating the interplay between neurobiological, clinical and behavioural aspects of adolescent development and youth mental health. Her research involves the transition from health to disease, with a particular interest in emerging mental health problems (psychosis), neuroimaging (MRI and fMRI), social cognition (empathy, psychosocial functioning), ...

Hugh Rickards is programme lead for the MSc Clinical Neuropsychiatry. He is also a consultant in neuropsychiatry at Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation NHS Trust which provides a service to the West Midlands Region.

 

Dr Rogers is a Assistant Professor in Psychology and Youth Mental Health based within the Institute for Mental Health, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham. His work uses different scientific methods such as clinical assessment, neuropsychological testing and neuroimaging techniques to better understand how brain maturation promotes normal cognitive development, and what causes this ...

Dr. Katrien Segaert's research focuses on the neurobiology of language processing, with a special focus on how sentence-level processes and interactive communication are supported by the brain. She also studies how the neurobiological infrastructure of language processing changes throughout the lifespan and researches lifestyle factors (such as regular physical exercise) that can ...

Professor Shapiro in collaboration with other colleagues published the first paper on the ‘attentional blink’ phenomenon. His current research interests continue in attention, particularly as it interacts with short- and long- term memory. He maintains an active lab that includes postdocs, doctoral and masters students, and undergraduate research assistants. In addition to basic ...

Dr Sophie Sowden is an experimental psychologist and director of the U21 Autism Research Network. She is interested in social cognition across the lifespan as well as in a range of clinical conditions including autism, conduct disorder and Parkinson’s Disease, and takes a cross-cultural approach to her research.

To read more about Dr Sowden’s research, visit her lab website here.

Peter Tiňo is a Professor of Complex and Adaptive Systems at the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of over 160 research articles in the areas of dynamical systems, machine learning, natural computation and fractal geometry. Peter has been awarded three outstanding Journal Paper of the Year awards and the Head of School's Excellence in Teaching Award.

Rachel is Professor of Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health at the University of Birmingham, and Consultant Psychiatrist in the Birmingham Early Intervention Services. Her research Interest is within the field of major mental illness; particularly schizophrenia and co-morbid depression in early phases of illness. Recent projects have developed the investigation of inflammatory models of psychosis ...

Dr Wilson’s research focusses on the non-invasive detection of brain metabolism with Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy. The goal of his work is to develop new techniques to explore the relationship between brain metabolism, function and health – with an emphasis on detecting early-stage disease processes.

I’m a research fellow investigating music cognition, psychology and neuroscience, with a special focus on rhythm, body-movement, affect and musical groove.

Sang-Hoon has an academic and industrial background in mechanical engineering and computer science. He uses techniques in robotics and virtual reality to understand how the brain collaborates with eyes, muscles and bones to coordinate our sensation and movement and is keen to apply the outcomes of research to diagnose and rehabilitate motor diseases and injuries. His current research interest ...

Dr. Lei Zhang is a cognitive computational neuroscientist. He directs the Adaptive Learning Psychology and Neuroscience Lab, ALP(e)N Lab, which addresses the fundamental question of the “adaptive brain” by studying the cognitive, computational, and neurobiological basis of (social) learning and decision-making in health and disease (i.e. Computational Psychiatry).