Dr Valdas Noreika

Research

Sleep and dreaming, Consciousness, Inter-brain synchronisation, Neurodevelopmental disorders, Time processing, Environmental psychology

Interests

My research focuses on the cognitive and neural mechanisms of drowsiness, dreaming and sleep. Using electroencephalography, transcranial magnetic stimulation, psychophysics and other techniques, I seek to identify distinct mechanisms of the contents and states of consciousness. My translational research focuses on sleep, subjective experiences and well-being in neurodevelopmental and mental health conditions (learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, depression) and on human-technology interactions (traffic, computers). I am also interested in time processing and temporal inter-brain synchronisation, e.g. during infant-parent interactions and, more recently, brain hyperscanning across different species. Currently, I am investigating the sleep and sensory sensitivity in adults with learning disabilities (funded by the Baily Thomas Charitable Fund) and the human-dog interaction (funded by the BBSRC). Recently, I started studying environmental attitudes and climate change-related social decision-making.

BIOGRAPHY

After obtaining a BA in Philosophy and an MSc in Neurobiology at Vilnius University, Lithuania, I earned a PhD in Psychology, focusing on altered states of consciousness and temporal distortions, under the supervision of Prof. Antti Revonsuo and Prof. Katja Valli at the University of Turku, Finland. After securing a European Mobility grant from the Volkswagen Foundation, I continued researching the neurodevelopment of time processing at the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, working under the supervision of Prof. Christine Falter-Wagner and Prof. Kia Nobre. Since then, I moved to Cambridge, where I joined Dr Tristan Bekinschtein’s Consciousness and Cognition Lab, first at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and later at the Department of Psychology, where I investigated wake-sleep transitions. Having had two other short postdoc projects, one on the kinaesthetic awareness when falling asleep at the Queensland Brain Institute, Australia (working with Prof. Jason Mattingley) and another on the neural mechanisms of infant-parent interaction at the University of Cambridge (Prof. Victoria Leong), I remained in Cambridge to carry out my own project on the neural correlates of religious and moral beliefs, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I started working as a Lecturer in Psychology (T&R) at the Queen Mary University of London, where I established the Sleep and Cognition Lab.

Publications

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

Grants