Professor Penny (Penelope) Lewis
Professor
- lewisp8@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44 (0)29 2087 0467
- 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
- Consolidation of procedural skills
- Emotional episodes
- Transition of memories from episodic to semantic
- '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
Biography
Undergraduate education
BA at Cornell University
Postgraduate education
DPhil at Oxford
Publications
2023
- Greco, V., Bergamo, D., Cuoccio, P., Konkoly, K. R., Lombardo, K. M. and Lewis, P. A. 2023. Wearing an eye mask during overnight sleep improves episodic learning and alertness. Sleep 46(3), article number: zsac305. (10.1093/sleep/zsac305)
- Abdellahi, M. E. A., Koopman, A. C. M., Treder, M. S. and Lewis, P. A. 2023. Targeting targeted memory reactivation: characteristics of cued reactivation in sleep. NeuroImage 266, article number: 119820. (10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119820)
2022
- Roebber, J. K., Lewis, P. A., Crunelli, V., Navarrete, M. and Hamandi, K. 2022. Effects of anti-seizure medication on sleep spindles and slow waves in drug-resistant epilepsy. Brain Sciences 12(10), article number: 1288. (10.3390/brainsci12101288)
- Sommer, T., Hennies, N., Lewis, P. A. and Alink, A. 2022. The assimilation of novel information into schemata and its efficient consolidation. Journal of Neuroscience 42(30), pp. 5916-5929. (10.1523/jneurosci.2373-21.2022)
- Navarrete, M., Arthur, S., Treder, M. S. and Lewis, P. A. 2022. Ongoing neural oscillations predict the post-stimulus outcome of closed loop auditory stimulation during slow-wave sleep. NeuroImage 253, article number: 119055. (10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119055)
- Pereira, S. I. R. et al. 2022. Cueing emotional memories during slow wave sleep modulates next-day activity in the orbitofrontal cortex and the amygdala. NeuroImage 253, article number: 119120. (10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119120)
- Debellemanière, E. et al. 2022. Optimising sounds for the driving of sleep oscillations by closed‐loop auditory stimulation. Journal of Sleep Research (10.1111/jsr.13676)
- Pereira, S. I. R., Santamaria, L., Andrews, R., Schmidt, E., Van Rossum, M. and Lewis, P. A. 2022. Rule abstraction is facilitated by auditory cueing in REM sleep. Journal of Neuroscience
2021
- Rakowska, M., Abdellahi, M. E., Bagrowska, P., Navarrete, M. and Lewis, P. A. 2021. Long term effects of cueing procedural memory reactivation during NREM sleep. NeuroImage 244, article number: 118573. (10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118573)
- Hutchinson, I. C., Pezzoli, S., Tsimpanouli, M., Abdellahi, M. E. A., Pobric, G., Hulleman, J. and Lewis, P. A. 2021. Targeted memory reactivation in REM but not SWS selectively reduces arousal responses. Communications Biology 4, article number: 404. (10.1038/s42003-021-01854-3)
2020
- Schneider, J., Lewis, P., Koester, D., Born, J. and Ngo, H. V. V. 2020. Susceptibility to auditory closed-loop stimulation of sleep slow oscillations changes with age. SLEEP 43(12) (10.1093/sleep/zsaa111)
- Pereira, S. I. R. and Lewis, P. A. 2020. Sleeping through brain excitation and inhibition. Nature Neuroscience 23, pp. 1037-1039. (10.1038/s41593-020-0697-4)
- Pereira, S. I. R. and Lewis, P. A. 2020. The differing roles of NREM and REM sleep in the slow enhancement of skills and schemas. Current Opinion in Physiology 15, pp. 82-88. (10.1016/j.cophys.2019.12.005)
- Navarrete, M., Schneider, J., Ngo, H. V., Valderrama, M., Casson, A. J. and Lewis, P. A. 2020. Examining the optimal timing for closed loop auditory stimulation of slow wave sleep in young and older adults. SLEEP 43(6), pp. 1-14. (10.1093/sleep/zsz315)
- Navarrete, M., Valderrama, M. and Lewis, P. A. 2020. The role of slow-wave sleep rhythms in the corticalhippocampal loop for memory consolidation. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 32, pp. 102-110. (10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.02.006)
2019
- Eichenlaub, J. et al. 2019. The nature of delayed dream incorporation ('dream-lag effect'): personally significant events persist, but not major daily activities or concerns. Journal of Sleep Research 28(1), article number: e12697. (10.1111/jsr.12697)
2018
- Belal, S. et al. 2018. Identification of memory reactivation during sleep by EEG classification. NeuroImage 176, pp. 203-214. (10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.04.029)
- Lewis, P., Knoblich, G. and Poe, G. 2018. How memory replay in sleep boosts creative problem solving. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 22(6), pp. 491-503. (10.1016/j.tics.2018.03.009)
- Eichenlaub, J. et al. 2018. Incorporation of recent waking-life experiences in dreams correlates with frontal theta activity in REM sleep. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 13(6), pp. 637-647. (10.1093/scan/nsy041)
2017
- Hennies, N., Lambon Ralph, M. A., Durrant, S. J., Cousins, J. N. and Lewis, P. 2017. Cued memory reactivation during SWS abolishes the beneficial effect of sleep on abstraction. Sleep 40(8) (10.1093/sleep/zsx102)
- Lewis, P. A., Birch, A., Hall, A. and Dunbar, R. I. M. 2017. Higher order intentionality tasks are cognitively more demanding. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 12(7), pp. 1063-1071. (10.1093/scan/nsx034)
- Tamminen, J., Lambon Ralph, M. A. and Lewis, P. 2017. Targeted memory reactivation of newly learned words during sleep triggers REM-mediated integration of new memories and existing knowledge.. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory 137, pp. 77-82. (10.1016/j.nlm.2016.11.012)
2016
- Cousins, J. N., El-Deredy, W., Parkes,, L. M., Hennies,, N. and Lewis, P. A. 2016. Cued reactivation of motor learning during sleep leads to overnight changes in functional brain activity and connectivity. Plos Biology 14(5), article number: e1002451. (10.1371/journal.pbio.1002451)
- Hennies, N., Lambon Ralph, M. A., Kempkes, M., Cousins, J. N. and Lewis, P. A. 2016. Sleep spindle density predicts the effect of prior knowledge on memory consolidation. Journal of Neuroscience 36(13), pp. 3799-3810. (10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3162-15.2016)
- Durrant, S. J., Cairney, S. A. and Lewis, P. A. 2016. Cross-modal transfer of statistical information benefits from sleep.. Cortex 78, pp. 85-99. (10.1016/j.cortex.2016.02.011)
2015
- van Rijn, E., Eichenlaub, J., Lewis, P. A., Walker, M., Gaskell, M., Malinowski, J. and Blagrove, M. 2015. The dream-lag effect: selective processing of personally significant events during Rapid Eye Movement sleep, but not during Slow Wave Sleep. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory 122, pp. 98-109. (10.1016/j.nlm.2015.01.009)
- Durrant, S. J., Cairney, S. A., McDermott, C. and Lewis, P. A. 2015. Schema-conformant memories are preferentially consolidated during REM sleep. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory 122, pp. 41-50. (10.1016/j.nlm.2015.02.011)
- Cairney, S. A., Durrant, S. J., Power, R. and Lewis, P. A. 2015. Complementary roles of slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep in emotional memory consolidation. Cerebral Cortex 25(6), pp. 1565-1575. (10.1093/cercor/bht349)
2014
- Cousins, J. M., El-Deredy, W., Parkes, L. M., Hennies, N. and Lewis, P. A. 2014. Cued memory reactivation during slow-wave sleep promotes explicit knowledge of a motor sequence. Journal of Neuroscience 34(48), pp. 15870-15876. (10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1011-14.2014)
- Hennies, N., Lewis, P. A., Durrant, S. J., Cousins, J. N. and Lambon Ralph, M. A. 2014. Time- but not sleep-dependent consolidation promotes the emergence of cross-modal conceptual representations. Neuropsychologia 63, pp. 1161-123. (10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.08.021)
- Cairney, S. A., Durrant, S. J., Jackson, R. and Lewis, P. A. 2014. Sleep spindles provide indirect support to the consolidation of emotional encoding contexts. Neuropsychologia 63, pp. 285-292. (10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.09.016)
- Cairney, S. A., Durrant, S. J., Hullemann, J. and Lewis, P. A. 2014. Targeted memory reactivation during slow wave sleep facilitates emotional memory consolidation. Sleep 37(4), pp. 701-707. (10.5665/sleep.3572)
2013
- Tamminen, J., Lambon Ralph, M. A. and Lewis, P. A. 2013. The role of sleep spindles and slow-wave activity in integrating new information in semantic memory. Journal of Neuroscience 33(39), pp. 15376-15381. (10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5093-12.2013)
2012
- Durrant, S. J., Cairney, S. A. and Lewis, P. A. 2012. Overnight consolidation aids the transfer of statistical knowledge from the medial temporal lobe to the striatum. Cerebral Cortex -New York- Oxford University Press- 23(10), pp. 2467-2478. (10.1093/cercor/bhs244)
- Powell, J., Lewis, P. A., Roberts, N., Garcia-Finana, M. and Dunbar, R. I. M. 2012. Orbital prefrontal cortex volume predicts social network size: an imaging study of individual differences in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 283(1824) (10.1098/rspb.2011.2574)
- Wuerger, S., Parkes, L., Lewis, P. A., Crocker-Buque, A., Rutschmann, R. and Meyer, G. F. 2012. Premotor cortex is sensitive to auditory–visual congruence for biological motion. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 24(3), pp. 575-587. (10.1162/jocn_a_00173)
2011
- Cairney, S. A., Durrant, S. J., Musgrove, H. and Lewis, P. A. 2011. Sleep and environmental context: interactive effects for memory. Experimental Brain Research 214, pp. 83-92. (10.1007/s00221-011-2808-7)
- Lewis, P. A., Cairney, S., Manning, L. and Critchley, H. D. 2011. The impact of overnight consolidation upon memory for emotional and neutral encoding contexts. Neuropsychologia 49(9), pp. 2619-2629. (10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.05.009)
- Lewis, P. A., Rezaie, R., Browne, R., Roberts, N. and Dunbar, R. I. M. 2011. Ventromedial prefrontal volume predicts understanding of others and social network size. NeuroImage 57(4), pp. 1624-1629. (10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.05.030)
- Durrant, S. J., Taylor, C., Cairney, S. A. and Lewis, P. A. 2011. Sleep-dependent consolidation of statistical learning. Neuropsychologia 49(5), pp. 1322-1331. (10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.015)
2010
- Javardi, A. H., Walsh, V. and Lewis, P. A. 2010. Offline consolidation of procedural skill learning is enhanced by negative emotional content. Experimental Brain Research 208(4), pp. 507-517. (10.1007/s00221-010-2497-7)
- Lewis, P. A., Couch, T. J. and Walker, M. P. 2010. Keeping time in your sleep: overnight consolidation of temporal rhythm. Neuropsychologia 49(1), pp. 115-123. (10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.10.025)
- Powell, J. L., Lewis, P. A., Dunbar, R. I. M., Garcia-Finana, M. and Roberts, N. 2010. Orbital prefrontal cortex volume correlates with social cognitive competence. Neuropsychologia 48(12), pp. 3554-3562. (10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.08.004)
2009
- Durrant, S. and Lewis, P. A. 2009. Memory consolidation: tracking transfer with functional connectivity. Current Biology 19(18), pp. R860-R862. (10.1016/j.cub.2009.08.019)
- Lewis, P. A. and Miall, R. C. 2009. The precision of temporal judgement: milliseconds, many minutes, and beyond. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 364(1525) (10.1098/rstb.2009.0020)
2007
- Holland, P. and Lewis, P. A. 2007. Emotional memory: selective enhancement by sleep. Current Biology 17(5), pp. R179-R181. (10.1016/j.cub.2006.12.033)
- Critchley, H. D., Lewis, P. A., Orth, M., Josephs, O., Deichmann, R., Trimble, M. R. and Dolan, R. J. 2007. Vagus nerve stimulation for treatment-resistant depression: behavioral and neural effects on encoding negative material. Psychosomatic Medicine -Washington- 69(1), pp. 17-22. (10.1097/PSY.0b013e31802e106d)
2006
- Lewis, P. A. and Miall, R. C. 2006. Remembering the time: a continuous clock. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10(9), pp. 401-406. (10.1016/j.tics.2006.07.006)
- Lewis, P. A., Critchley, H. D., Rothstein, P. and Dolan, R. J. 2006. Neural correlates of processing valence and arousal in affective words. Cerebral Cortex -New York- Oxford University Press- 17(3), pp. 742-748. (10.1093/cercor/bhk024)
- Lewis, P. A. and Miall, R. C. 2006. A right hemispheric prefrontal system for cognitive time measurement. Behavioural Processes 71(2-3), pp. 226-234. (10.1016/j.beproc.2005.12.009)
2005
- Lewis, P. A. and Walsh, V. 2005. Time perception: components of the brain’s clock. Current Biology 15(10), pp. R389-R391. (10.1016/j.cub.2005.05.008)
- Lewis, P. A., Critchley, H. D., Smith, A. P. and Dolan, R. J. 2005. Brain mechanisms for mood congruent memory facilitation. NeuroImage 25(4), pp. 1214-1223. (10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.11.053)
2004
- Lewis, P. A., Wing, A. M., Pope, P. A., Praamstra, P. and Miall, R. C. 2004. Brain activity correlates differentially with increasing temporal complexity of rhythms during initialisation, synchronisation, and continuation phases of paced finger tapping. Neuropsychologia 42(10), pp. 1301-1312. (10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2004.03.001)
2003
- Lewis, P. A. and Critchley, H. D. 2003. Mood-dependent memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(10), pp. 431-433. (10.1016/j.tics.2003.08.005)
- Lewis, P. A., Miall, R. C., Daan, S. and Kacelnik, A. 2003. Interval timing in mice does not rely upon the circadian pacemaker. Neuroscience Letters 348(3), pp. 131-134. (10.1016/S0304-3940(03)00521-4)
- Lewis, P. A. and Miall, R. C. 2003. Brain activation patterns during measurement of sub- and supra-second intervals. Neuropsychologia 41(12), pp. 1583-1592. (10.1016/S0028-3932(03)00118-0)
- Lewis, P. A. and Miall, R. C. 2003. Distinct systems for automatic and cognitively controlled time measurement: evidence from neuroimaging. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 13(2), pp. 250-255. (10.1016/S0959-4388(03)00036-9)
2002
- Lewis, P. A. and Miall, R. C. 2002. Brain activity during non-automatic motor production of discrete multi-second intervals. Neuroreport -Oxford- 13(4), pp. 1731-1735.
- Lewis, P. A. 2002. Musical Minds. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6(9), pp. 364-366. (10.1016/S1364-6613(02)01955-1)
- Lewis, P. A. 2002. Finding the timer. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6(5), pp. 195-196. (10.1016/S1364-6613(02)01906-X)
- Lewis, P. A. and Walsh, V. 2002. Neuropsychology: Time Out of Mind. Current Biology 12(1), pp. R9-R11. (10.1016/S0960-9822(01)00638-8)
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
Supervision
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
Anne Koopman - studying sleep engineering for creativity
Jules Schneider - studying ways to trigger SWS
Past projects
Previous students
Hikaru Tsujimura – Did a PhD exploring the impact of sleep on the generalisation of facial representations and competition between different identities
Tia Tsimpanouli – Did a PhD on sleep, emotional memory and depression
Isabel Hutchison – Did a PhD on the impact of direct current stimulation on sleep and memory
Nora Hennies – Did a PhD on the impact of sleep upon the formation of new semantic memories
James Cousins – Did a PhD on the impact of triggered replay during sleep upon overnight memory consolidation
Scott Cairney – Did a PhD on sleep and emotional memory and is now a postdoc at York
Previous postdocs
Matthias Treder - studied the detection of neural replay in sleep with EEG classifiers and is now a lecturer in Computer Science at Cardiff University.
Suliman Belal - studied the application of multivariate classifiers to sleep EEG data.
Alexia Zoumpoulaki - studied the detection of neural replay in sleep with EEG classifiers and is now a lecturer in Computer Science at Cardiff University.
Simon Durrant - studied the importance of SWS for gist abstraction and integration of new learning into schemas and is now a Lecturer at the University of Lincoln.
Jakke Tamminen - studied the importance of sleep for integration of new learning into existing knowledge and is now a postdoc at Royal Holloway.
Media activities
I am quite active in the media, and frequently give interviews for the BBC, NPR, and other networks. I recently gave a TEDx talk on Sleep Engineering, have written a popular book 'The Secret World of Sleep’ and edited a book of short stories about sleep 'Spindles’. For links to some of my media work, please look here.
