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Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Reader in Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL



Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL. She is Leader of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Group at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. Her group's research focuses on the development of social cognition and executive function in the typically developing adolescent brain.

Sarah-Jayne studied Experimental Psychology at Oxford University (1993-1996) and then did her PhD (1996-2000) at the Functional Imaging Lab (FIL) with Chris Frith and Daniel Wolpert, investigating the self-monitoring of action in healthy individuals and people with schizophrenia. She then took up a Wellcome Trust International Research Fellowship (2001-2003) to work in Lyon, France, with Jean Decety on the perception of causality in the human brain. This was followed by a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship (2004-2007) and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2007-2016) at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. Sarah-Jayne was awarded the British Psychological Society Doctoral Award 2001, the BPS Spearman Medal for outstanding early career research 2006, the Annual Lecturer Award 2011 by the Swedish Neuropsychology Society, the Young Mind&Brain Prize 2013 and the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award 2013. Her h-index (h papers cited at least h times) is 48; i10-index (number of papers cited 10+ times) is 76; with a total of over 100 journal papers and 9898 citations (Google Scholar August 2013). She is PI on >£1M of current research grants.

Sarah-Jayne is actively involved in Public Engagement with Science: she frequently gives public lectures and talks at schools, has worked with the Select Committee for Education, and acted as scientific consultant on the BBC series The Human Mind in 2003. Sarah-Jayne has an interest in the links between neuroscience and education. She co-authored a book with Professor Uta Frith called The Learning Brain: Lessons for Education. She sits on the Royal Society BrainWaves working group for neuroscience, education and lifelong learning and the the Royal Society Vision for Science and Mathematics Education 5-19 Committee.

Sarah-Jayne is Deputy Director of the Wellcome Trust Four Year PhD Programme in Neuroscience at UCL. She is Consulting Editor for Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.