Alexa Morcom

Dr. Alexa Morcom is an Associate Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience at the School of Psychology, University of Sussex. Her research focuses on human memory, particularly how episodic memory and its neural substrates change with normal aging. She employs functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electrophysiological techniques like event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate memory processes. Key areas of interest include memory control mechanisms, functional compensation in aging brains, and the role of perceptual/semantic similarity in memory errors.

Her work is supported by grants such as the 2019 BIAL Foundation grant (Temporal Decoding of Selective Recollection with Psychophysiology). She emphasizes reproducible research practices, publishing data and preregistering studies on platforms like OSF. Dr. Morcom teaches Cognitive Psychology and supervises undergraduate/postgraduate projects at the University of Sussex.

Research highlights include demonstrating that increased frontal brain activity in older adults reflects nonspecific neural responses rather than compensation, and showing age-invariant mechanisms in associative false recognition. Her studies often involve collaborations with researchers like Knights, Henson, and Hoffman, focusing on neuroimaging meta-analyses and longitudinal aging studies.

Labs/Teams: Active involvement in the Cam-CAN longitudinal study (Phase 4/5) and collaborations within the School of Psychology. Advising hours are held weekly via Zoom/in-person, emphasizing student accessibility.