Heida Maria Sigurdardottir is a Professor of Psychology at University of Iceland and a Principal Investigator of Icelandic Vision Lab. She earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Brown University specializing in systems/cognitive neuroscience (primary advisor: David Sheinberg; secondary advisor: Michael J. Tarr).
Her research centers on visual cognition: how we perceive, recognize, and interpret things in the visual world around us. She investigates not only typical visual processing, but also how differences in experience, learning, memory, and individual variation shape high-level vision. Her lab’s projects span a wide range of topics, including how object recognition develops across the lifespan, how people “see” in their mind’s eye (visual imagery), and how visual cognitive factors contribute to reading difficulties such as dyslexia.
To address these questions, her lab primarily use behavioral experiments, complemented by electroencephalography (EEG) and computational modeling with deep neural networks. Her previous work has also involved eye tracking, pupillometry, single-cell recordings, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Curriculum Vitae / Google Scholar Profile
Drawing by Knútur Haukstein Ólafsson
Photos by Kristinn Ingvarsson / University of Iceland