Sarah Shomstein

Sarah Shomstein is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Department Chair in the Department of Psychology at George Washington University. She is affiliated with the Neuroscience Institute and Mind-Brain Institute. Her research focuses on understanding the neural and psychological mechanisms of attentional selection, including spatial and object-based attention, and how semantic and sensory information influence perception and memory.

Shomstein holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Johns Hopkins University (2003). Her methodologies include behavioral experiments, eye tracking, functional neuroimaging, and studies with individuals with attentional deficits due to brain damage. She directs the Attention and Cognition Laboratory, exploring how attention modulates sensory processing and memory across the lifespan.

Her work highlights interactions between working memory and perception, the role of semantics in visual attention, and the neural basis of attentional control. Recent studies investigate real-world object processing, crossmodal semantic effects, and the impact of reward on attentional allocation. No scientific awards or grants are explicitly mentioned, but her research has been widely published in top journals.