Maha Adamo, Volunteer Coordinator

I first pursued my interests in cognitive neuroscience through my undergraduate studies in Cognitive Science and my research experience in the Department of Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego. There I was involved in studies using both EEG and fMRI to examine cognitive function in several populations, including healthy young and aging adults, normally developing children, and individuals with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. After graduating from UCSD, I completed a year of full-time research before coming to graduate school at the University of Toronto to work with Dr. Susanne Ferber. My research now focuses on how attentional control and working memory processes interact and contribute to visuospatial awareness. Using behavioural, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging techniques, my aim is to develop a model of how the neural systems underlying selective attention and visual short-term memory are functionally integrated to support dynamic awareness. Ongoing research projects involve the flexibility of attentional orienting using attentional control sets, the nature of attention-based rehearsal in spatial working memory, and how varying task demands can alter the efficacy of attentional selection.