Skip to main content
Penelope Lewis

Professor Penelope Lewis

Professor

School of Psychology

Email
LewisP8@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 29208 70467
Campuses
Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre, Maindy Road, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ

Overview

Research summary

I am primarily interested in off-line learning during sleep and wakefulness: my research investigates brain plasticity, focusing specifically on the changes in behaviour and neural activity which occur after initial learning. I’m particularly interested in changes occurring while a memory is not being encoded, practised, or recalled. These can happen both during sleep and during wakefulness.

Current interests in the lab fall into four main categories

  1. Consolidation of procedural skills
  2. Emotional episodes
  3. Transition of memories from episodic to semantic
  4. 'Sleep engineering’ or ways to manipulate sleep for greater cognitive and or health benefit (see TEDx talk)

Sleep is critical for both health and cognition. Our lab is developing ways to manipulate sleep (called 'Sleep Engineering’) in order to maximise its beneficial properties. We are working on ways to enhance memory, disarm negative emotions, and combat cognitive decline through ageing. Read more here.

Teaching summary

I am teaching on the MSc Neuroimaging: Methods and Applications - PST505

Publication

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

Articles

Conferences

Research

Funding

BBSRC, MRC, EPSRC, Wellcome Trust, DARPA

Research collaborators

Hong Viet-Ngo, Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioural Neurobiology ,Teubingen, Germany 9

Alex Casson, Electrical Engineering, Manchester, UK

Simon Stringer, Oxford Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, Oxford, UK

Biography

Undergraduate education

BA at Cornell University

Postgraduate education

DPhil at Oxford

Supervisions

Postgraduate research interests

If you are interested in applying for a PhD, or for further information regarding my postgraduate research, please contact me directly (contact details available on the 'Overview' page), or submit a formal application.

Current students

Mahmoud Eid Abdelhafez Abdellahi

Imogen Birch

Holly Kings

Anne Koopman - studying sleep engineering for creativity

Martyna Rakowska

Jules Schneider - studying ways to trigger SWS