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photo of Sarah Garfinkel

Prof Sarah Garfinkel

Post:BSMS Faculty (Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science)

Biography

In 2018, the journal Nature identified Sarah Garfinkel as one of 11 'Rising Star' scientists, across all STEM disciplines. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06622-8

The research of Professor Sarah Garfinkel centres on body-brain interactions underlying emotion and cognition. She investigates how individual differences in interoception (perception of internal bodily sensations) can influence emotion and memory. Based in Neuroscience and Psychiatry, she also determines how aberrant bodily and neural mechanisms can contribute to symptom maintenance in psychiatric conditions such as Anxiety, PTSD, Autism and Schizophrenia. She has a particular interest in the heart, such as heart-brain interactions underlying the gating of fear responses.

In each stage of her career Sarah has received extensive training in a number of diverse techniques, including memory and pharmacology (PhD, Βι¶ΉΣ³»­), psychiatry and neuroimaging (University of Michigan) and autonomic affective neuroscience (BSMS with Hugo Critchley). Together, these techniques provide her with the tools to pursue an integrative approach combining functional imaging (fMRI) with cardiovascular monitoring/manipulation to investigate body-brain interactions in emotion and cognition

Role

Sarah Garfinkel is a Professor in Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the Brighton and Βι¶ΉΣ³»­ Medical School and the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the Βι¶ΉΣ³»­. She also has a part time appointment in the Βι¶ΉΣ³»­ Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.