Research excellence

Research across the subject of Psychology attempts to advance our understanding of behaviour and the underlying mental processes and brain functions at multiple levels of analysis. This effort entails the integration of diverse approaches and paradigms from experimental psychology, cognitive science and the cognitive neurosciences.

We are committed to producing basic and applied research of the highest quality with a focus on three main areas:

• An interdisciplinary effort to advance the understanding of the complex relationship between the brain, cognition and behaviour. This brings together researchers with an interest in cognitive neuroscience, functional neuroimaging, neuropsychology and computational modelling. The Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCNi) aims to develop new methods for understanding brain mechanisms, and to train interdisciplinary scientists in the use of those methods and techniques.
• The new science of social interactions, a science that blends behavioural, computational and neuroimaging techniques to investigate human social function, communication and cooperation. Our research examines a range of mechanisms that underlie social interaction: from gestures and expressive signals, from the face, voice and body to language-based communication. We have special interest in how such local interactions affect the dynamics and structure of larger scale social networks.
• Further research areas include sleep, language, visual perception, computational methods, memory, thought and social interaction.