Citizenship Fields Neuroscience Name Anna Nobre | Nationality | |
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Born February 22, 1963 (age 61)
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ( 1963-02-22 ) Institutions Yale University
Harvard University
University of Oxford Alma mater Williams College
Yale University Education Yale University, Harvard University, Williams College | ||
Doctoral advisor Gregory McCarthy | ||
Anna Christina De Ozorio Nobre, FBA (born 1963, Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian neuroscientist working in the United Kingdom.
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She holds the Chair in Translational Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and is Professorial Fellow at St Catherine's College and Honorary Fellow at New College. At Oxford, Nobre is Head of Department of Experimental Psychology and she directs the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity (OHBA) – a state-of-the-art facility for studying neural dynamics involved in supporting healthy human cognition and understanding their disruption in neuropsychiatric and neurological disorders. She is also Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, USA, where she is affiliated with the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center and she is also member of the Academic Europaea. Nobre is an advisor to the James S McDonnell Foundation for the Understanding Human Cognition Program, and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. She is married to the philosopher Luciano Floridi.
Life and work
Nobre grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and was educated at the Escola Americana do Rio de Janeiro (EARJ). She moved to the United States to complete her higher education. She obtained her BA from Williams College in 1985, with a Contract Major in the area of neuroscience; and obtained her MPhil, MS, and PhD (1992) from Yale University for research on intracranial and non-invasive electrophysiological studies of language and attention in the human brain. During her postdoctoral research at Yale, and Harvard (1992-1994), she was involved in some of the first brain-imaging studies of cognitive functions in the human brain. Prior to her current appointment, she was McDonnell Pew Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience and the Astor and Todd Bird Junior Research Fellow at New College (1994-1996). She currently serves on the advisory board of NeuroFocus, a Berkeley, California-based neuromarketing company.
On 16 July 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).
Research
Nobre uses multiple and complementary non-invasive brain-imaging methods (MEG, EEG, ERP, FMRI, TMS), combined with behavioural studies, in order to explore and understand the neural systems that support cognitive functions in the human brain. In particular, much of her work investigates 'attentional orienting': how the brain generates moment-to-moment predictions about events to unfold in order to optimise perception and action. Other topics in her research include the representation of time, how words and objects acquire meaning, and the influence of motivation over perception.