Professor Zoe Kourtzi

My work aims to understand the role of learning and experience in enabling humans of all ages to translate sensory experience into complex decisions and adaptive behaviours. Adaptive cognitive abilities are critical for survival and social interactions, yet extracting meaning from the complex, and frequently ambiguous, input of the natural world is a computationally demanding task that is far from understood. I address this challenge through an interdisciplinary approach that combines behavioural paradigms with multimodal brain imaging (MRI, EEG, MEG, TMS) and state-of-the-art computational methods. I apply these techniques to study the young and ageing brain and understand learning and cortical plasticity across the lifespan.

• learning and brain plasticity
• visual perception and cognition
• cognitive ageing
• brain imaging
• computational neuroscience