Pin-Chun Chen

Pin-Chun Chen is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, affiliated with the Department of Psychology. She holds a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship and leads research in the Memory & Sleep Group under PI Bernhard Staresina. Her work investigates how sleep oscillations (e.g., ripples, spindles) facilitate memory consolidation across domains using EEG, iEEG, and fMRI. She earned a Ph.D. in Cognitive Sciences and M.Sc. in Statistics from UC Irvine, followed by postdoctoral training at UPenn.

• Education:
• Ph.D. in Cognitive Sciences, University of California Irvine (USA)
• M.Sc. in Statistics, University of California Irvine (USA)

Research focuses on sleep’s role in memory processing, particularly interactions between central neural activity and autonomic systems (e.g., cardiac function). Key themes include REM sleep’s impact on memory refinement, age-related changes in sleep physiology, and sleep-stage specific cognitive benefits.

Publications highlight sleep’s influence on working/episodic memory, autonomic-cardiac coupling during sleep, and novel electrophysiological markers of learning. Her work has advanced understanding of how sleep oscillations modulate functional brain changes supporting cognition.

• Awards: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship

Collaborations include studies on pediatric melanoma epidemiology, showcasing interdisciplinary reach. She actively investigates translational applications of sleep neuroscience for cognitive enhancement and aging-related decline mitigation.