Contact
Biography
Education: I have a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronic Engineering. I completed a PhD in Visual Perception examining the hemodynamic and neural correlates of basic visual properties such as contrast, depth, motion and motion parallax using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and event-related potentials (ERPs).
Work: From 2013 to 2015, worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the CHILDS Lab Facility/DELTA Center at the University of Iowa,USA looking at how manipulation of memory load would affect working memory and inhibitory control using functional magnetic reasonance imaging (fMRI) and fNIRS. Here, I also developed some novel methodological pipelines for analyzing fNIRS data. From 2015 to 2017, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of East Anglia,England examining the development of visual working memory across the lifespan - particularly in infancy and early childhood and older adults. From 2018 to 2019, I was a Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Stirling in Scotland.
Research Summary
The overarching objective of my research is to understand the behavioural and neural bases of executive functions across the spectrum of life using a suite of behavioural measures, neuroimaging… read more
Recent Publications
ERIC S. JACKSON, SOBANAWARTINY WIJEAKUMAR, DERYK S. BEAL, BRYAN BROWN, PATRICIA M. ZEBROWSKI and JOHN P. SPENCER, 2021. Speech planning and execution in children who stutter: Preliminary findings from a fNIRS investigation Journal of Clinical Neuroscience. 91, 32-42 SAMUEL H. FORBES, SOBANAWARTINY WIJEAKUMAR, ADAM T. EGGEBRECHT, VINCENT A. MAGNOTTA and JOHN P. SPENCER, 2021. Processing pipeline for image reconstructed fNIRS analysis using both MRI templates and individual anatomy Neurophotonics. 8(2), 1 - 18
Current Research
The overarching objective of my research is to understand the behavioural and neural bases of executive functions across the spectrum of life using a suite of behavioural measures, neuroimaging techniques and computational modelling. My research program revolves around three central themes.
(1) The first strand of my research examines how executive functions such as working memory and response inhibition are organized in the brain and how these processes can be explored using a computational modeling framework called dynamic field theory.
(2) In the second strand of my research, I investigate visual working memory development in typical early development within low and high socio-economic settings, and in older adults.
See related press release: https://www.stir.ac.uk/news/2019/04/research-shows-impact-of-poverty-on-childrens-brain-activity/
(3) In the third strand of my research,I aim to understand the origin and development of brain-to-brain synchrony in different contexts - particularly during infant-mother and child-mother dyadic interactions.