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Dr Natasha Sigala

Dr Natasha Sigala (BSc, MSc, PhD, PGDipLATHE, MRSB)

Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience
E: N.Sigala@bsms.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)1273 678939
Location: Room 208 Trafford Centre for Medical Research, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RY

DA contact details: Christina Lee
E: C.Lee2@bsms.ac.uk
T: 01273 873833

Area of expertise: Cognitive Neuroscience; learning and memory, working memory, visual perception, categorisation, attention, development of expertise.

Research areas: Psychophysics and MR imaging in Cognitive Neuroscience.

Other relevant positions: Module leader for 202: Neuroscience and Behaviour, Research Lead for the Department of Neuroscience, Teaching Lead for the Department of Neuroscience, Governor (University representative) for Sussex Partnership Trust Council of Governors.

BACKGROUND IMAGE FOR PANEL

Biography

Natasha studied Biology at the University of Patras, Greece, where she then completed an MSc in Human and Animal Physiology. In 1997 she moved to Germany, where she earned her PhD with summa cum laude in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and the Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen. With the fancy title of Doctor rerum naturalis she joined the Dept of Exp. Psychology at the University of Oxford and the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit Cambridge in 2002, and worked between the two places until 2010, when she joined BSMS as a Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience.

Research

Natasha’s work has focused on learning and memory:

BACKGROUND IMAGE FOR PANEL

Teaching

Natasha is an Academic Tutor, organises and teaches on the Neuroscience and Behaviour Module for undergraduate Medical and Neuroscience students, and teaches on the Cognitive Neuroscience MSc organised by the School of Psychology.

Selected publications

Pfeifer G, Ward J, Sigala N. (2019) Reduced Visual and Frontal Cortex Activation During Visual Working Memory in Grapheme-Color Synaesthetes Relative to Young and Older Adults. Front Syst Neurosci. 2019 Jul 10;13:29. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2019.00029. eCollection 2019

Critchley, H., & Sigala, N. (2019). Brain Imaging and Function. In C. Llewellyn, S. Ayers, C. McManus, S. Newman, K. Petrie, T. Revenson, et al. (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology, pp. 175-178). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Z. Kaldy & N. Sigala (2017) Editorial: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Visual Working Memory, Front. Syst. Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2017.00001.

G. Pfeifer, J. Ward, D. Chan, N. Sigala (2016) Representational Account of Memory: Insights from Aging and Synesthesia. J Cogn Neurosci Jul 26:1-16.

M. Kadohisa, M. Kusunoki, P. Petrov, N. Sigala, M. Buckley, D. Gaffan, J. Duncan (2015) Spatial and temporal distribution of visual information coding in lateral prefrontal cortex, Eur J Neurosci 41(1):89-96 doi: 10.1111/ejn.12754.

G. Pfeifer, N. Rothen, J. Ward, D. Chan & N. Sigala (2014) Associative memory advantage in grapheme-colour synaesthetes compared to older, but not younger adults, Frontiers in Psychology, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00696 pp. 1-13 5.

N. Sigala (2014) The contribution of fMRI in the study of visual categorization and expertise, in Advanced Brain Neuroimaging Topics in Health and Disease - Methods and Applications. 2014; Ed. T.D. Papageorgiou, G.I. Christopoulos and S. Smirnakis InTech – Open Access Publisher, DOI: 10.5772/58276, ISBN 978-953-51-1203-7 pp. 253 – 281.

L. Minati & N. Sigala (2013) Effective connectivity reveals strategy differences in an expert calculator, PLoS One 8(9): e73746.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0073746 pp. 1-12

Stokes M., Kusunoki M., Sigala N., Nili H., Gaffan D., Duncan J. (2013) Dynamic coding for cognitive control in prefrontal cortex, Neuron 78: 1-12, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2013.01.039.

N. Hon, R. Thompson, N. Sigala & J. Duncan (2009). Evidence for long-range feedback in target detection: Detection of semantic targets modulates activity in early visual areas, Neuropsychologia 47(7):1721-7.

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