معرفی
David Donaldson is a Professor of Psychology at the School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, where he joined on January 1, 2020. His research focuses on cognitive neuroscience with particular emphasis on understanding human episodic memory and its applications in real-world contexts.
Dr. Donaldson is primarily interested in understanding human episodic memory - exploring questions such as 'why does memory decline with age?', 'why is it so easy to recognise familiar faces, but so difficult to recognise unfamiliar faces?' and 'when I leave work, why can't I recall where I parked my car that day?' His research employs mobile EEG to examine human behavior during real-world activity, taking memory studies outside traditional laboratory settings. His work extends to spatial navigation, attention mechanisms, and applied issues including sporting behavior. His research fingerprint reveals significant contributions to Parkinson's Disease, Behavior (Neuroscience), Event-Related Potentials, Motor Control, Metacognition, Episodic Memory, Information Retrieval, and Cognitive Processes.
His recent publications (2023-2025) demonstrate a strong trend toward applying cognitive neuroscience techniques to real-world problems, with particular focus on memory encoding in virtual contexts, neural correlates of motor behavior, and the impact of emotional states on cognitive performance. His work bridges laboratory research with practical applications, especially in sports performance, Parkinson's disease, and social interactions, showing an increasing emphasis on mobile EEG applications in naturalistic settings.
Dr. Donaldson has secured funding through the University of St Andrews Impact & Innovation Fund for the project 'Creating a Dynamic Domestic Abuse Services Database' (2023-2024), which has received significant attention with coverage by 64 news outlets and mentions across various social media platforms. He serves as a supervisor for research projects and has created 9 datasets related to his research on memory, EEG, and cognitive processes.
His research group utilizes mobile EEG technology to investigate cognitive processes in naturalistic settings, with a particular focus on understanding how the brain supports memory, navigation, and attention during everyday activities. The lab's approach emphasizes ecological validity by studying behavior in real-world contexts rather than traditional laboratory settings, with recent work examining golf putting performance, obstacle navigation, and Parkinson's disease mechanisms using mobile recording techniques.
