Jessica McFadyen

Jessica is a cognitive neuroscientist investigating the brain networks that underlie how we perceive threats and make decisions. She is currently working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research in London, under the supervision of Professor Ray Dolan. Jessica uses a combination of computational modelling and magnetoencephalography (MEG) to determine how positive and negative scenarios are rapidly played out in the brain. She is interested in relating this to individual differences in trait anxiety.

Before moving to the UK, Jessica studied a Bachelor of Psychological Science at the University of Queensland, Australia. After being awarded Honours Class I, Jessica embarked on a PhD at the affiliated Queensland Brain Institute. Here, she was supervised by Associate Professor Marta Garrido and Professor Jason Mattingley. Jessica gained expertise in electroencephalography (EEG), MEG, fMRI, and diffusion MRI tractography analyses. She explored the anatomy and function of fast pathways to the amygdala that carry visual information about threats.