People
Directors
- Associate Professor Marta Garrido
Director
Cognitive Neuroscience and Computational Psychiatry Lab
Associate Professor Marta Garrido
Marta leads the Cognitive Neuroscience and Computational Psychiatry Laboratory at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, at The University of Melbourne, and is Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Integrative Brain Function. Marta received her PhD in 2008 from University College London and did postdocs at University California Los Angeles and back at University College London. In 2013 she moved to the Queensland Brain Institute, at the University of Queensland, on a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award where she later established her independent laboratory. In mid-2019 the lab moved to the University of Melbourne.
Marta’s team use a combination of brain imaging techniques and computational modelling to understand the neural underpinnings of learning and decision making both in typical individuals as well as in people with psychiatric disorders.
Email
marta.garrido@unimelb.edu.au
Address
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia
- Dr Natalia Egorova
Deputy Director
Pain and Cognition Neuroimaging Lab
Dr Natalia Egorova
Natalia Egorova is a cognitive neuroscientist with a research interest in the neurobiology of language and pain. She is also a clinical neuroimager interested in depression, aging and stroke. In her work she uses various neuroimaging tools and methods (EEG, MEG, fMRI, NIRS, tDCS) to investigate brain network states and dynamics. Currently, she is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow based at the Melbourne University School of Psychological Sciences. She also holds an Honorary appointment at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge / Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, followed by postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School and the University of Geneva.
Email
natalia.egorova@unimelb.edu.au
Address
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia
Phone
+61 3 9035 7053
Members
- Professor Rob Hester
Head of School
Cognitive Neuroimaging Lab
Professor Rob Hester
My research examines the psychological and neural bases of executive functions, specifically self-control and performance monitoring. I am the director of the Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences. Our lab’s research is focussed on how healthy people control their impulsive decisions towards rewarding stimuli. Similarly, we are interested in how they detect, and/or use negative feedback, to flexibly adapt their behaviour. We’ve also applied this research to examining dyscontrol and failures of error awareness in clinical conditions (such as drug dependence), where failures of control are central to the clinical symptomatology.
Email
hesterr@unimelb.edu.au
Location
Room 703, Redmond Barry Building, Parkville Campus
Address
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia
Phone
+61 03 8344 0222 - Professor Philip Smith
Vision and Attention Lab
Professor Philip Smith
Professor Philip Smith is Professor of Quantitative and Mathematical Psychology and a former editor of the Journal of Mathematical Psychology.
My research is concerned with the decision processes that are involved in translating perception into action. These kinds of decisions are ubiquitous in daily life. Deciding whether to stop or go when a traffic light changes and deciding whether a person in the street is a stranger or an acquaintance are two examples of the kinds of decisions we make rapidly and effortlessly many times a day. While they seem simple and effortless, these decisions are complex computationally and neurally. To solve the problem represented by the decision task computationally, the brain must be able to answer the questions: "what is it" and "what should I do about it?" This requires that processes of perception, attention, memory and decision making cooperate to form a representation of the external world and act on it to produce a behavioural response.
Professor Smith investigates mathematical models of the speed and accuracy of the cognitive processes of dynamic decision making and of their neural foundations. His recent work investigates continuous-outcome decisions, in which the decision outcome is expressed on a continuous scale. Such decisions are important practically, because many real-world decisions involve a continuous outcome set (e.g., how much money should I commit to a risky investment?) and theoretically, because they tell us about the quality of the representations in perception and memory on which decision are based.
Email
philipls@unimelb.edu.au
Address
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia
Phone
+61 03 8344 6378 - Professor Olivia Carter
Human Experience Lab
Professor Olivia Carter
Olivia interested in the neurobiological factors that determine an individual’s conscious experience. She heads the Human Experience Lab within the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences where the bulk of her research focuses on the impact of neurotransmitter systems on cognitive and perceptual function in healthy individuals. Clinically, Olivia's research focuses on altered cognitive and perceptual function in psychiatric populations. She also has an interest in neuroethics, particularly in relationship to cognitive enhancing agents and technologies.
Email
ocarter@unimelb.edu.au
Location
Room 811, Redmond Barry Building, Parkville Campus
Address
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia
Phone
+61 03 8344 6372 - Associate Professor Stefan Bode
Decision Neuroscience Lab (DLab)
Associate Professor Stefan Bode
A/Prof Bode is a researcher with an interest in the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying human decision-making.
His research team investigates the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying perceptual, reward-based, voluntary and change-of-mind decisions, as well as preference formation, decision confidence, health decisions, decision errors, and related cognitive processes. He is also interested in research questions related to behavioural change, emotion regulation and global health. His research integrates a variety of methods from experimental psychology, including reaction time experiments in the laboratory, cognitive modelling, response force measurements and other decision behaviour, as well as cognitive neuroscience, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). He has developed the Decision Decoding Toolbox (DDTBOX), a multivariate analysis toolbox for EEG data, that can be used to investigate the neural basis of decision-making and other cognitive processes.
Email
sbode@unimelb.edu.au
Location
Room 817, Redmond Barry Building, Parkville Campus
Address
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia
Phone
+61 03 9035 3849 - Associate Professor Katherine Johnson
Attention Dynamics Lab
Associate Professor Katherine Johnson
Katherine is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist with an interest in attention and concentration. She and her lab members use a variety of methods to measure focus and attention control in infants, children, and adults. Her clinical research interests include measuring the cognitive and physiological differences associated with children and adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared with typically developing children and adults. She and her lab members are interested in examining the effects of exposure to nature on mental well-being and concentration, and the development of memory and attention in infants.
Sample of recent publications:
Landry, O., Johnson, K A., Fleming, S., Crewther, S., Chouinard, P. A new look at the developmental profile of visual endogenous orienting. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2019, 183(7), 158-171. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.01.022
Lewis, F.C., Reeve, R., Johnson, K.A. A Longitudinal Analysis of the Attention Networks in 6- to 11-year-old Children. Child Neuropsychology, 2018, 24(2), 145-165. DOI: 10.1080/09297049.2016.1235145
Williams, K J W., Lee, KE., Hartig, T., Sargent, L D., Williams, N S. Johnson, K A. Conceptualising creativity benefits of nature experience: Attention restoration and mind wandering as complementary processes. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2018, 59(10), 36-45. DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2018.08.005Email
kajo@unimelb.edu.au
Location
Room 803, Redmond Barry Building, Parkville Campus
Address
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia
Phone
+61 03 8344 6349 - Dr Daniel Feuerriegel
Prediction and Decision-Making Lab
Dr Daniel Feuerriegel
Dr Daniel Feuerriegel is a cognitive neuroscientist and Decision Science Research Fellow in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences.
His research program is focused on how our decisions are influenced by our history of prior choices and experiences. He uses a variety of neuroimaging techniques, such as electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in combination with computational modelling and machine learning approaches, to investigate how decisions are formed in the brain. He is also interested in how our prior knowledge and expectations are implemented within the neural circuitry of the visual system, and how we can use this knowledge to identify strange or salient events that occur in our environment. Daniel is also involved in applied research on how modifiable risk factors, ranging from malnutrition in infants to cardiovascular health in old age, influence our brain function and decision making.
Email
daniel.feuerriegel@unimelb.edu.au
Address
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia - Dr Jason Forte
Cognitive Neuroscience Lab
Dr Jason Forte
I am a cognitive neuroscientist interested in visual processing, numerical cognition and noninvasive brain stimulation. My research utilises behavioural (msec reaction time), physiological (EEG, eye-tracking, pupil responses) and mathematical methods to examine and understand how we process visual and quantitative information. My research has also explored the effects (and non-effects) of non-invasive brain stimulation techniques such as tDCS.
Email
jdf@unimelb.edu.au
Phone
+61 03 8344 4912 - Dr Jacqueline Anderson
Subcortical Cognitive Dysfunction Lab
Dr Jacqueline Anderson
Dr Anderson is a researcher in the area of clinical neuropsychology who specialises in abnormal cognitive functioning. She and her lab members use a combination of clinical and laboratory-based tools to investigate adult patient populations with neuropsychological disorders. Her research interests primarily relate to outcome after mild traumatic brain injury and stroke. In particular, she is focused on investigating the neuropsychological (cognitive, behavioural, psychological) and neuropathological aetiologies of individual patient variation in outcome after these events. She has a further specific interest in abnormalities of attention, executive function and subcortical cognitive networks in the context of neuropsychological disorders.
Email
jfande@unimelb.edu.au
Phone
+61 03 8344 6362 - Dr Sarah Tashjian
Affective Neuroscience and Development Lab
Dr Sarah Tashjian
Dr Sarah Tashjian is a cognitive neuroscientist and developmental psychologist. Dr Tashjian is the director of the Affective Neuroscience and Development Lab at the University of Melbourne in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences. Her lab studies how neurobiological changes from pre-puberty through early adulthood influence affect and behaviour. Her research combines high-resolution neuroimaging (7 Tesla fMRI) with novel decision-making tasks and computational modelling to understand the nature of decision making for reward, safety, and threat. She is particularly interested in how development of the adolescent brain confers risk for psychopathology such as anxiety.
- Dr Paul Garrett
Vision and Attention Lab
Dr Paul Garrett
Dr. Paul Garrett is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Decision Sciences and Complex Human Data Hubs. Paul received his PhD in cognitive and mathematical psychology from the University of Newcastle, Australia. He then moved to the University of Melbourne where he completed one post-doctoral position on modelling attitudes towards COVID-19 tracing technologies; and began a second post doctoral position researching event boundaries in human memories with Prof. Simon Dennis, and modelling human vision and decision making with Prof. Philip Smith.
In 2021, Paul founded the psychological sciences early career academic network (PECAN) to help bring early-stage academics together in the school of psychological sciences.
Today, Paul's research areas include attention and decision making, experience sampling, human memory and emotions, attitudes to COVID-19 technologies, systems factorial technology, and dynamic causal models of human behavior. He is friendly, likes cats, and is always happy to talk about how we can bring advanced cognitive methods to new branches of psychological inquiry.
Paul has published 14 peer reviewed papers, and has several additional early access preprints available through his Google Scholar.
Email
paul.garrett@unimelb.edu.au
Address
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia - Dr Jacob Paul
Maths at the Human Scale Lab (MATHS Lab)
Dr Jacob Paul
Dr Jacob Paul is a cognitive neuroscientist and academic research fellow at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences. His research interests include visual perception, individual differences in numerical cognition (including dyscalculia), and the modelling neurocognitive development of maths reasoning. He completed his PhD in the School before undertaking postdoctoral work at Utrecht University (Netherlands) combining ultra-high resolution 7 Telsa fMRI and computational modelling to characterise how the brain encodes quantities like number, time, and space. His current research projects include (1) mapping changes in brain networks that underpin (un)successful math learning, (2) using VR/AR technologies to simulate how your numerical acuity affects the way you move through crowded spaces, and (3) quantifying visual processing abnormalities in hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD).
Email
jacob.paul@unimelb.edu.au
Address
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia
Staff
- Lauren Fong
Cognitive Neuroscience Manager
Lauren Fong
Email
fong.l@unimelb.edu.au
Address
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia
Phone
+61 03 8344 4204 - Janet Chan
Hub Coordinator
Janet Chan
Email
yu.chan@unimelb.edu.au
Address
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia
- Professor Anthony Burkitt
NeuroEngineering Lab
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Professor Anthony Burkitt
Professor Anthony Burkitt is the Research Director of Bionic Vision Australia (BVA) and Professor of Engineering at the University of Melbourne.
BVA is a partnership of world-leading Australian research institutions collaborating to develop an advanced retinal prosthesis, or bionic eye, to restore the sense of vision to people with degenerative or inherited retinal disease. The partners of Bionic Vision Australia are the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales, the Bionic Ear Institute, the Centre for Eye Research Australia and NICTA.
In December 2009 Bionic Vision Australia (BVA) was awarded $42 million from the Federal Government. Professor David Penington says the grant, provided over four years, will take the team to the point where commercial development of an implant at the back of the eye, responding to wireless transmission of vision, will become a reality.
- Professor Anthony Hannan
Epigenetics and Neural Plasticity Lab
Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
Professor Anthony Hannan
Professor Anthony Hannan is an NHMRC Principal Research Fellow and Head of the Epigenetics and Neural Plasticity Laboratory, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne. Prof. Hannan received his undergraduate training and PhD in neuroscience from the University of Sydney. He was then awarded a Nuffield Medical Fellowship at the University of Oxford, where he subsequently held other research positions before returning to Australia on an NHMRC RD Wright Career Development Fellowship to establish a laboratory at the Florey Institute. He subsequently won other fellowships and awards, including an ARC FT3 Future Fellowship and NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship.
Prof. Hannan and colleagues provided the first demonstration in any genetic animal model that environmental stimulation can be therapeutic. This has led to new insights into gene-environment interactions in various brain disorders, including Huntington’s disease, dementia, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety disorders and autism spectrum disorders.
His research team at the Florey explores how genes and the environment combine via experience-dependent plasticity in the healthy and diseased brain. Their research includes models of specific neurological and psychiatric disorders which involve cognitive and affective dysfunction, investigated at behavioural, cellular and molecular levels so as to identify pathogenic mechanisms and novel therapeutic targets. Most recently, this has included studies of intergenerational and transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. Prof. Hannan has published >200 articles which have been cited >10,000 times (Google Scholar).
- Associate Professor Jill Lei
Department of Management and Marketing
Associate Professor Jill Lei
My research interests are mainly in the area of consumer decision making, especially how consumers make trade-off decisions in various contexts, such as food consumption and financial decisions.
- Associate Professor Shinsuke Suzuki
Brain, Mind and Markets Lab
Department of Finance
Associate Professor Shinsuke Suzuki
Shinsuke Suzuki is an Associate Professor in the Brain, Minds and Markets Laboratory in the Department of Finance in the Faculty of Business and Economics.
Shinsuke’s current research aim is to understand the neural and computational principles underlying human decision-making. To elucidate the computational and neural mechanisms, he employs a new neuroimaging method known as “model-based fMRI” that combines functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with computational modeling. In this approach, he constructs a quantitative computational model of a particular decision-making paradigm and applies this model to neuroimaging data in order to identify neural activity related to each of the specific computations in the decision-making process. He believes his studies involving model-based fMRI can provide significant insight into understanding the neural underpinnings of mental disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, anxiety and autism.
Prior to joining The University of Melbourne, Shinsuke was an Assistant Professor at the Tohoku University in Japan. He obtained his PhD in Economics from The University of Tsukuba in Japan in 2008. After that, he switched his research field to neuroscience and worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar at RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan and California Institute of Technology in USA.
Email
shinsuke.suzuki@unimelb.edu.au
Address
Room 12.036, The Spot, 198 Berkeley Street, Carlton
- Dr Elizabeth Bowman
Brain, Mind and Markets Lab
Department of Finance
Dr Elizabeth Bowman
Elizabeth Bowman is a Research Fellow in the Brain, Minds and Markets Laboratory in the Department of Finance in the Faculty of Business and Economics. Her current research looks at how variations in neurotransmitters may affect how people make complex optimisation decisions and decisions under risk and uncertainty. This includes pharmacological experiments in complex decision making, surveys of the use of pharmacology for attempted cognitive enhancement purposes, and investigations of how humans make predictions with regard to the frequency of outlier events under leptokurtic uncertainty.
With a background in magnetic resonance imaging, eye movements and optics, and retinal physiology, she graduated with a PhD in visual neuroscience from the University of Melbourne in 2013. Dr Bowman has previously worked with the Melbourne Brain Centre at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Bionic Vision Australia, and the University of Melbourne's Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences. She has also obtained a Bachelor of Science with Honours in neuroscience from the Australian National University.
Dr Bowman's current research interests include neuropharmacology, computational complexity, prediction errors, pupillometry and clinical trials.
Email
eabowman@unimelb.edu.au
Address
Level 12, The Spot, 198 Berkeley Street, Carlton
Phone
+61 3 9035 9950 - Dr Inbar Levy
Melbourne Law School
Dr Inbar Levy
Dr Inbar Levy completed her DPhil in Law at University College, Oxford. Her doctoral project, titled ‘Behavioural Analysis of Civil Procedure Rules’, written under the supervision of Professor Adrian Zuckerman, investigated the implications of findings derived from empirical behavioural psychology for legal reasoning and practice.
Inbar had been awarded a Joint Law and Psychology LLB with Magna Cum Laude honours and subsequently an LLM with similar honours from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before going to Oxford, she served as a legal advising officer in the Military Advocate General unit of the Israeli Defense Forces.
Inbar joined Melbourne Law School as a Lecturer in 2015, after a short period as a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for the Study of Rationality and the Sacher Institute in Jerusalem. Her primary research areas are procedural justice and empirical legal research, with a particular interest in behaviour and decision-making, access to justice and institutional design.
Inbar has previously held a Visiting Research Fellow position at Columbia Law School in the City of New York and a Visiting Researcher position at Harvard Law School. And, most recently, a Houser Global Fellow position at NYU School of Law.
Email
inbar.levy@unimelb.edu.au
Address
Melbourne Law School, Room 0750
Phone
+61 3 8344 9341 - Dr Nicholas Van Dam
Decision-Making and Affective Learning in Emotional Conditions Laboratory (DALEC)
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
Dr Nicholas Van Dam
My research interests center on the use of cognitive neuroscience methods, decision science, and computational psychology/psychiatry to better understand and delineate high-prevalence symptoms across the spectrum from normal to pathological with a critical focus on value-based decision-making processes.
My primary translational research objective is to advance the understanding of the clinical phenomenology and neurobiology of mood and anxiety disorders, as well as discrete domains that are commonly observed among these conditions (e.g., suicidality, approach vs. avoidance behaviors). I aim to better understand these conditions (and the range of normal to abnormal behaviors that underpin them) through a combination of advanced psychometrics, experimental manipulation, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and computational modeling.
In addition to my goals to classify and predict these conditions, I am also interested in optimizing treatment and intervention approaches via identification of response likelihoods during the natural course of treatment (especially in the context of general clinical assessment, as well as pharmaco-therapy and psycho-therapy).
Email
nicholas.vandam@unimelb.edu.au
Location
Room 816, Redmond Barry Building, Parkville Campus
Address
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia
Phone
+61 03 8344 3644 - Prof Ofir Turel
Information Systems Group
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
Prof Ofir Turel
Ofir Turel is Professor of Information Systems Management at the University of Melbourne, and a Scholar in Residence at the Brain and Creativity Institute, Department of Psychology at the University of Southern California (USC). He has published over 180 journal articles in business research outlets such MIS Quarterly, Journal of MIS, MIT Sloan Management Review, Communications of the ACM, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, and Information Systems Journal; and psychology/ psychology and neuroscience outlets such as Journal of Psychiatric Research, Addiction Biology, Cerebral Cortex, Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, Behavioural Brain Research, Brain Imaging and Behavior, and Social Neuroscience. He has been recognized in the top 2% of researchers worldwide in a study conducted by Stanford University. His research has been also featured in numerous media outlets, including for example, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Daily Mail, CBC, C|net, Times Higher Education, The Rolling Stone, PBS, and TV and radio stations, globally.
- Dr Helen Dixon
Principal Research Fellow
Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer
Cancer Council Victoria
Helen Dixon
Helen has been conducting behavioural research applied to cancer prevention and public health since the mid-1990’s. Her main area of research endeavour involves assessing adult’s and children’s responses to health-relevant media and communications, especially in relation to nutrition and obesity prevention. This work includes population surveys and experimental studies assessing consumer responses to public health campaigns, nutrition labelling interventions and commercial product marketing.
Helen regularly collaborates with Cancer Council’s Prevention Division, the Obesity Policy Coalition, and other external researchers and health educators involved in chronic disease prevention. She is an Honorary Principal Fellow in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at The University of Melbourne (where she earlier completed her PhD) and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at Curtin University.
Affiliates
Collaborators
Labs
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Affective Neuroscience and Development Lab
Lab Director: Dr Sarah Tashjian
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Attention Dynamics Laboratory
Lab Director: A/Prof Katherine Johnson
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Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory
Lab Director: Prof Rob Hester
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Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory
Lab Director: Dr Jason Forte
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Cognitive Neuroscience and Computational Psychiatry Laboratory
Lab Director: A/Prof Marta Garrido
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Decision Neuroscience Laboratory (DLab)
Lab Director: A/Prof Stefan Bode
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Human Experience Laboratory
Lab Director: Prof Olivia Carter
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Maths at the Human Scale Lab (MATHS Lab)
Lab Director: Dr Jacob Paul
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Pain and Cognition Neuroimaging Lab
Lab Director: Dr Natalia Egorova
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Prediction and Decision-Making Lab
Lab Director: Dr Daniel Feuerriegel
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Subcortical Cognitive Dysfunction Lab
Lab Director: Dr Jacqueline Anderson
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Vision and Attention Laboratory
Lab Director: Prof Philip Smith