Ms Lauren Heidenreich

PhD Candidate
Supervised by Dr. Irina Baetu and Ass. Prof. Lyndsey Collins-Praino

I am a PhD student in the Cognitive and Neural Sciences Laboratory at the University of Adelaide. I am interested in the neurocognitive bases of associative learning. How people learn to associate events that regularly occur together fundamentally impacts cognition and behaviour. Many clinical presentations, including addiction, anxiety and Parkinson's disease can be described in terms of abnormal learning. Thus, understanding the properties of associative learning not only provides avenues for optimised learning in the general population, but also for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of clinical disorders. My research aims to increase our understanding of the mechanisms that generate normal and abnormal learning. To do this I combine stimulus-response learning paradigms with brain stimulation, electroencephalography and/or genetic testing. I also employ computational modelling techniques to elucidate underlying mechanisms.

*Please note that I have gone by my married name (Foreman) in the below publications.