Marco Bigica
Research student, School of Psychology
- bigicam@cardiff.ac.uk
- Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre, Maindy Road, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ
Overview
I am a postgraduate research student interested in sleep. I am currently studying the impact of sleep deprivation on brain and cognition using a combination of behavioural and neuroimaging methods.
Undergraduate Education
BSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at University of Westminster, London, UK
Postgraduate Education
MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at CIMEC, University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy.
Research
Research interests
I am a postgraduate research student interested in sleep. I am currently studying the impact of sleep deprivation on brain and cognition using a combination of behavioural and neuroimaging methods.
Main project: impact of sleep deprivation on brain function and cognition
Sleep is necessary for everyone and lack of sleep causes great distress to the individual and the society. But why is sleep so important? How does it benefit the brain? In my research I use a range of behavioural and psychophysical tasks to assess the impact of sleep deprivation on different cognitive domains (e.g. vigilance, perception, attention and metacognition) and on spontaneous and task-evoked brain activity using fMRI. Understanding how lack of sleep affects the brain can provide insights into the function and mechanisms of sleep and help us understand exactly how sleep benefits the brain.
Teaching
2019/2020 - Postgraduate tutor (PGT) to year 1 psychology students. I delivered tutorials on research methods, basic statistics and scientific writing, and marked students’ courseworks.
