Deborah Talmi

Dr. Deborah Talmi is a University Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the cognitive, computational, and neurobiological mechanisms underlying emotional processes, particularly their intersection with memory, perception, and attention. She leads the Emotional Cognition Lab, which employs behavioral experiments, EEG, fMRI, and computational modeling to explore how emotions influence memory formation and retrieval.

• Roles: Associate Professor (Department of Psychology), Fellow (Lucy Cavendish College), Principal Investigator (Emotional Cognition Lab)
• Affiliations: School of Biological Sciences, Cambridge Neuroscience

Her research investigates questions such as why emotional experiences feel a certain way, how emotion shapes memory, and the neural basis of similarity perception. A recent study demonstrated that emotionally charged stimuli evoke more similar neural representations than neutral ones, even when controlling for thematic content. This work was published in the Journal of Neuroscience and is part of broader efforts to model emotional memory using frameworks like the Bayesian Brain hypothesis.

Dr. Talmi collaborates with institutions like the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences and employs interdisciplinary methods, including animal models of emotional memory with Prof. Amy Milton. She actively mentors PhD students and welcomes volunteers through the SONA platform. Her lab’s findings have implications for understanding chronic pain, decision-making, and mental health.

Her work has been featured in The Conversation and TEDx, emphasizing public engagement. She is also committed to advancing education, as seen in her reflections on remote teaching during the pandemic.