Postdoctoral Researcher
Contact Details
Email: dominika.varga@bbk.ac.uk
Research Interests
My research sits at the intersection of memory, learning, predictive processing, and cognitive control, studying how the brain uses past experience to guide future behaviour flexibly.
As a postdoctoral researcher in the Vaghi Lab, I use precision functional mapping with fMRI to characterise how these processes unfold and stabilise within individuals over time (longitudinally), and how they become dysregulated in psychiatric disorders (such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).
Education
2020-2024 PhD in Psychology – University of Sussex Funded by the School of Psychology Doctoral Scholarship; Supervisor: Professor Chris Bird Thesis title: Processing and remembering naturalistic experiences inconsistent with prior expectations
2015-2019 MSci in Psychology – University of York Degree award: Master of Science in Psychology with First Class Honours
Prizes and Awards
Sussex Neuroscience Seed Fund – £13000 research grant to run an event-related functional Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy study and develop the analysis pipeline (University of Sussex, October 2024-March 2025).
Winner of the University of Sussex 3 Minute Thesis competition (June 2023).
Winner of the Sussex Neuroscience PhD Prize (University of Sussex, May 2023).
Brain Travel Award to attend the international Learning and Memory Conference 2023 Huntington Beach, California (Guarantors of Brain, March 2023).
Winner of the Departmental MSci Project Prize (Department of Psychology, University of York, July 2019).