Dr Katja Kornysheva PhD FHEA

Dr Katja Kornysheva

School of Psychology
Associate Professor in Human Neuroscience
UKRI Future Leaders Fellow

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 2879
Email
k.kornysheva@bham.ac.uk
Twitter
@KatjaKornysheva
View my research portal
Address
School of Psychology
Centre for Human Brain Health
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Dr Katja Kornysheva is a leading expert in the neural basis of skilled movement control, learning and memory. 

Further information

Qualifications

PhD University of Münster & Max Planck Institute for Neurological Research, Germany.

M.A. University of Cologne & Max Planck Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Germany.

Biography

Dr Katja Kornysheva is an Associate Professor in Human Neuroscience and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research combines fMRI, MEG/EEG, and computational approaches to uncover how the brain organises movement and to translate these principles into improved rehabilitation, enhanced motor learning, and next-generation brain–computer interfaces.

She has secured more than £3.1M in funding as Principal Investigator (including UKRI FLF, ARIA, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Wellcome Trust) and leads an interdisciplinary team spanning cognitive neuroscience, computer science, and engineering, with industry partnerships in neurorehabilitation and robotics. She previously served a three-year term as Co-Director of the Centre for Human Brain Health (CHBH), where she oversaw the centre’s strategy and operations. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Society for the Neural Control of Movement, is an Editor at the Journal of Motor Behavior, and regularly reviews for journals including Nature, Nature Neuroscience, and PNAS, as well as for international funding agencies such as UKRI, ERC, DFG, and HFSP.

Her team’s work has been featured in Science, The Telegraph, EurekAlert, and eLife, and she has delivered over 45 invited talks, including international conference keynotes.

Teaching

MSc and PhD project supervisor; Lecturer in Human Neuroimaging and Translational Cognitive Neuroscience.

Postgraduate supervision

Dr. Kornysheva is keen to hear from interested potential PhD students to discuss funding possibilities. Please send a brief email with CV and reason for interest in the Skilled Action and Memory lab.

Research

Research expertise and interests:

  • Neural control and planning of skilled action sequences
  • Movement order, timing and hierarchical motor control
  • MEG/EEG and fMRI neural decoding & computational modelling
  • Motor learning, skill acquisition, and expertise
  • Movement disorders (dystonia, DCD)
  • Brain-computer interfaces and digital neurorehabilitation 

Other activities

Consulting Editor, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Board of Directors, Society for the Neural Control of Movement

Editor, Journal of Motor Behaviour


Publications

Highlight publications

Yewbrey, R & Kornysheva, K 2024, 'The hippocampus pre-orders movements for skilled action sequences', The Journal of Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0832-24.2024

Yewbrey, R, Mantziara, M & Kornysheva, K 2023, 'Cortical patterns shift from sequence feature separation during planning to integration during motor execution', The Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 43, no. 10, pp. 1742-1756. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1628-22.2023

Kornysheva, K, Bush, D, Meyer, SS, Sadnicka, A, Barnes, G & Burgess, N 2019, 'Neural Competitive Queuing of Ordinal Structure Underlies Skilled Sequential Action', Neuron, vol. 101, no. 6, pp. 1166-1180.e3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2019.01.018

Kornysheva, K & Diedrichsen, J 2014, 'Human premotor areas parse sequences into their spatial and temporal features', eLife, vol. 3, pp. e03043. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.03043

Sadnicka, A, Kornysheva, K, Rothwell, JC & Edwards, MJ 2018, 'A unifying motor control framework for task-specific dystonia', Nature Reviews Neurology, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 116-124. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2017.146

Recent publications

Article

Doyle, H, Yewbrey, R, Kornysheva, K & Desrochers, TM 2025, 'Motor and Cognitive Sequence Tasks Exhibit Different Ramping Patterns in Parietal and Prefrontal Cortices', Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_02349

Sadnicka, A, Rocchi, L, Latorre, A, Antelmi, E, Teo, J, Pareés, I, Hoffland, BS, Brock, K, Kornysheva, K, Edwards, MJ, Bhatia, KP & Rothwell, JC 2022, 'A critical investigation of cerebellar associative learning in isolated dystonia', Movement Disorders, vol. 37, no. 6, pp. 1187-1192. https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.28967

Mantziara, M, Ivanov, T, Houghton, G & Kornysheva, K 2021, 'Competitive state of movements during planning predicts sequence performance', Journal of Neurophysiology, vol. 125, no. 4, pp. 1251-1268. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00645.2020

Heins, N, Pomp, J, Kluger, DS, Vinbrüx, S, Trempler, I, Kohler, A, Kornysheva, K, Zentgraf, K, Raab, M & Schubotz, RI 2021, 'Surmising synchrony of sound and sight: factors explaining variance of audiovisual integration in hurdling, tap dancing and drumming', PLoS ONE, vol. 16, no. 7, e0253130. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253130

Sadnicka, A & Kornysheva, K 2019, 'What's in a Name? Conundrums Common to the Task-Specific Disorders', Movement Disorders Clinical Practice, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 573-574. https://doi.org/10.1002/mdc3.12684

Other contribution

Mantziara, M, Ivanov, T, Houghton, G & Kornysheva, K 2020, Competitive state of actions during planning predicts sequence execution accuracy. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.08.085068

Preprint

Karagiorgis, A, Dyck, S, Das, A, Kornysheva, K, Azañón, E & Stenner, M-P 2026 'A domain-general neural signature of serial order memory across action and perception' bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.03.27.714833

Wright-Wieckowski, H, Friedman, J, Galea, J & Kornysheva, K 2025 'Competitive pre-ordering during planning persists in kinematically fused sequential movements' bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.18.670892

Yin, Z, Liu, JK & Kornysheva, K 2025 'Distributed neural dynamics underlie the shift from movement preparation to execution' bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.09.693175

Doyle, H, Yewbrey, R, Kornysheva, K & Desrochers, TM 2024 'Ramping dissociates motor and cognitive sequences in the parietal and prefrontal cortices' bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.10.09.617499

Yewbrey, R & Kornysheva, K 2024 'The hippocampus pre-orders movements for skilled action sequences' bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.04.24.590889

Yewbrey, R, Mantziara, M & Kornysheva, K 2022 'Cortical patterns shift from sequence feature separation during planning to integration during motor execution' bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.07.13.499902

Sadnicka, A, Rocchi, L, Latorre, A, Antelmi, E, Teo, JT, Parees, I, Hoffland, BS, Brock, K, Kornysheva, K, Edwards, MJ, Bhatia, KP & Rothwell, JC 2021 'The final blink: intact eyeblink conditioning in isolated dystonia' medRxiv, pp. 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.26.21260809

Review article

Chan, RW, Abrahamse, E, Blischke, K, Bongers, RM, Boutin, A, Hummel, FC, Immink, MA, Kornysheva, K, van der Lubbe, RHJ, Maceira, P, Panzer, S, Ruitenberg, MFL, Sburlea, AI, Seidler, R, Taylor, JA, Wright, DL & Verwey, WB 2026, 'Diversity, Individualization, and Enhancement in Motor Learning: Current Challenges and Future Directions From the First Theoretical and Applied Advances in Motor Learning Conference', Journal of Motor Learning and Development, vol. 14, no. 1, jmld.2025-0133. https://doi.org/10.1123/jmld.2025-0133

Kornysheva, K 2016, 'Encoding Temporal Features of Skilled Movements-What, Whether and How?', Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol. 957, pp. 35-54. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47313-0_3

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

motor control and learning; systems neuroscience; disorders of movement; brain decoding; brain-computer-interfaces; neuroscience and music.

Media experience

Telegraph, LiveScience, Elife Discovery Drivers, EurekAlert, the Conversation, Wales Advances etc.