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Professor Lorina Naci

Professor In (Psychology)
Professor In (Trinity Inst. of Neurosciences (TCIN))
 (3531896) 8541
      
Profile Photo

Professor Lorina Naci

Professor In (Psychology)

 nacil@tcd.ie

 3531896

Professor In (Trinity Inst. of Neurosciences (TCIN))

 (3531896) 8541


Lorina Naci is Professor in Psychology, leader of the 'Consciousness and Cognition group (www.lorinanaci.org), and Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge as an International Cooke Fellow. Her work focuses on developing novel biomarkers of healthy and disordered cognition in brain-injured and ageing populations, including individuals with early Alzheimer's dementia. Her work has made ground-breaking contributions to the understanding of cognition and consciousness for individuals with severely limited motoric output, such as severely brain-injured, anaesthetised or advanced Alzheimer's Disease patients. Professor Naci's recent work has enabled some patients, who met all the internationally agreed criteria for the clinical diagnosis of 'vegetative state' to communicate their thoughts to the outside world. Concurrently, she explores the medico-ethical and societal implications of these applications. She is recipient of prestigious funding awards from the Health Research Board of Ireland (2024) and the Science Foundation Ireland (2024). She has held the L'Oréal for Women in Science Research Excellence Fellowship from Canada (2016), and received the L'Oréal Foundation France and UNESCO International Rising Talent Award (2017). Professor Naci is a member of the Governing Board of the Global Brain Health Institute, at Trinity College Dublin and the University of California San Francisco, USA. She is funded by the the Health Research Board of Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland, Wellcome Trust, the Irish Research Council, the Provost's Award, China-Trinity fund, Enterprise Ireland, etc. Professor Naci's work has had significant impacts, including scientific, societal, policy and professional practice and economic. It has been published in leading international journals, including Science Advances (2023), Nature Communications (2024), Journal of the American Medical Association (2024), Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2024), Brain Communications (2024), etc. It is routinely featured in academic textbooks (e.g., 'Cognitive Psychology'; 5th edition E. Bruce Goldstein 2018) and has been featured in Wikipedia"s `Science Highlights of 2023", and editorials in the Science and Nature journals. Three articles published in the last 12 months (Bayne et al. 2023; Deng et al. 2023; Luppi et al. 2023), two senior-authored (Bayne et al. 2023; Deng et al. 2023), are at the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.com, ranking in the 97-99 percentile of all articles of the same age internationally, for their outstanding attention scores, with 70% of downloads being from members of the public. Bayne et al. Naci (2023) had over 100 mentions in publications all round the world, reaching a readership of 115 million worldwide. Professor Naci's work has attracted the attention of the media globally (> 200 unique news stories) and she is actively engaged in the public communication of science. Most recently, she spoke to Drive Time on RTE1 on brain health effects of contact sports (Dec 2024). Her recent interview with `Futureproof with Jonathan McCrea", Newsnight"s flagship science program, aired on August 11th, 2024. In January 2024, she was hosted in the studio of Albanian Primetime TV for a 1-hour long feature interview. Professor Naci has given interviews and been featured in The Irish Times, Irish Examiner, The New Scientist, The Daily Mail, BBC World Service, Macleans, The Verge, Brazil Post, NBC News, The Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Times, Radio Canada International, Fox News, Corriere della Sera, The Daily Mail, CTV News, The Huffington Post, Reuters, The Agenda with Steve Parkin, The Chicago Tribune, The Toronto Sun, Global News, Newswise, Medpage Today, Nature, and Science. Her work was profiled in the Irish Times (March 2021) article "Does the key to consciousness lie within our brains?"
  AGEING   Biomedical Ethics   BRAIN AGEING   CLINICAL ANAESTHESIA   CONSCIOUSNESS   Dementia/ Alzheimer's Disease   disorders of consciousness   Functional neuroimaging   healthcare ethics and law   Minimally Conscious State   Neuroimaging   TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY   Vegetative state
Project Title
 RESOLVE
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Summary
Funding Agency
Research Ireland
Project Title
 PREVENT DEMENTIA
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Summary
Funding Agency
Health Research Board of Ireland
Project Type
Individual Led Project
Project Title
 Mid-life Brain Vulnerability and Resilience Following Traumatic Brain Injury: Implications for Lifelong Brain Health
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Summary
Funding Agency
Trinity College
Programme
PI-Based Doctoral Awards
Project Type
PhD
Project Title
 Longitudinal multi-modal MR imaging in PREVENT Dementia
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Funding Agency
Alzheimer's Society of the UK
Programme
Project Grant
Project Title
 Optimising brain health through modifyable lifestyle factors prior to the onset of dementia
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Summary
Funding Agency
Research Ireland
Programme
Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship
Project Type
PhD

Page 1 of 4
Details Date
Member of Review Board for Alzheimer's Society (UK) `Doctoral Training Centers" funding initiative 0ctober 2026
External Examiner of PhD at the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge 15/05/2026
External Exmainer for the PhD Thesis of Alessia Ruyant Belabbas, Paris Brain Institute,Sorbonne University November 2026
External Reviewer for the 'Early Career Awards' Italian Funding Agency Fondacione Regionale Per La Richerca Biomedica September 2026
External Examiner of PhD at the Department of Medicine at the University of Oslo 03/03/2026
Member of Review Board for `Alzheimer"s Association Capacity Building Program Grant' (USA) 21/02/2024
Member of Review Board for Alzheimer"s Society (UK) `Doctoral Training Centers" funding initiative 15/03/2024
Member of the Board of Managers, of the Ranelagh Multi-denominational School, in Dublin, Ireland 2023 - 2027
Steering Committee Member of the PREVENT Dementia International Consortium 2019 - onwards
Consultant for Belgian Alzheimer Foundation 05/09/2023
Member of the Council of 'Neuroscience Ireland,' Ireland's National Neuroscience Society 15/08/2023
Management Committee Member for the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action: "The Neural Architecture of Consciousness." 2019-2023
PhD dissertation committee for George Blackburne, University College London 2024 - onwards
Lead Principal Investigator of the `International Consortium on Ethical Frameworks for Advances in Brain Health" (https://www.tcd.ie/Neuroscience/Ethics), with colleagues from Oxford University (UK), University of California San Francisco (UCSF, USA), UCL Queen Square of Neurology (UK), and Samvedna Care (India). 2022 - onwards
Co-Chair of the the `Featured Research Perspectives" session at the Alzheimer"s Association International Conference (Netherlands, 2023; 300 attendees). 2023
Chair of the Conference Opening Welcome Session, at the Alzheimer"s Association International Conference (AAIC) Satellite Symposium, in Mexico City, Mexico. 15/05/2023
Associate Editor for the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease 01/01/2023
External reviewer for MSc dissertation at McGill University, Canada 2021
Reviewer for the Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme 2021
Reviewer for the Alzheimer's Association "Pilot Awards for Global Brain Health Leaders program" 2019, 2020
Member of the Neuroimaging Group of the Neonatal and Children's Hospital Brain Consortium Ireland 2020
Representative of Ireland at the European Union COST Action Grant, titled "The neural architecture of consciousness" 2019
Member of review panel for the "International Graduate Awards to Oxford and Cambridge Universities, UK", from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (USA) 2018
Scientific Advisor for NeuroBlot Inc. , personalized app-based cognitive screening 2017
Scientific Reviewer for Brain-Computer Interface 7th International Meeting, California, USA 2019
External Reviewer for PhD thesis of Michael Craig, at the University of Cambridge 27/02/2019
Scientific Reviewer for The Organization for Human Brain Mapping Annual Meeting 2017
Scientific Reporter for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research 2014, 2016
External Reviewer for the MSc Thesis for the BioSciences Master program at Ens de Lyon, France 2016
Reporter for the EU Decoder Grant, University of Maastricht 08/3/2011
Regular ad-hoc reviewer for over 50 international journals including: PNAS, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Intensive Care Medicine, Journal of the Neurological Sciences, New England Journal of Medicine, Brain, Annals of Neurology, BMC Neurology, Cerebral Cortex, Journal of Experimental Psychology, NeuroImage, AJOB Empirical Bioethics, Scientific Reports. 2017-2026
Details Date From Date To
Member of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness 2015 2026
Alzhemers Association of the USA 2018 2026
Member of the Organisation for Human Brain Mapping 2007 2026
Member of the Society for Neuroscience 2014 2026
Member of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2007 2015
Deng F, Ritchie K, Muniz-Terrera G, Malhotra P, Ritchie CW, Lawlor B, Naci L, Genetic risk of late-onset Alzheimer's disease is associated with longitudinal loss of functional brain network segregation in middle-aged cognitively healthy individuals: The PREVENT-Dementia Study., medRxiv. Under Peer Review, 2026, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Szocs D, Lyu D, Luppi AI, Coppola P, Woodrow R, Williams GB, Allanson J, Pickard JD, Owen AM, Naci L, Menon DK, Stamatakis EA., A novel thalamic perspective of (un)consciousness in pharmacological and pathological states in humans., Brain Communications, 2026, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Coppola P, Owen AM, Menon DK, Naci L, Stamatakis EA., The neural correlates of shared and individual experience., Communications Biology, 2026, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Erukull R, Reid G, Yotter C, Dounavi ME, Low A, O"Brien J, Ritchie C, Lawlor B, Naci L, Malhotra P, Koychev I., Insulin Resistance as a Dementia Prevention Target: Association with Brain Health and Depression in Midlife., eBioMedicine, 2026, Journal Article, IN_PRESS
Whooley, E., Cunningham, J., Broglio, S., Verhagen, E., Naci, L., & Wilson, F. (2026)., Influence of playing rugby on long-term cognitive health following retirement: An updated systematic review and meta-analysis., BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine, 2026, Journal Article, SUBMITTED
Bolin Cao, Carlos Coronel-Oliveros, Siobhan Hutchinson, Damien Ferguson, Ivan Koychev, Paresh Malhotra, John T. O"Brien, Katie Bridgeman, Craig W. Ritchie, Agustin Ibanez, Lorina Naci, High-order functional connectivity reveals brain vulnerability decades before clinical onset, in midlife individuals with genetic risk for late-life Alzheimer"s Disease, 2026, Journal Article, SUBMITTED
Cao B. Qi Q, Hutchinson S, Ferguson D, Malhotra P, Koychev I, O'Brien JT, Bridgeman K, Ritchie CW, Lawlor B, Naci L*, and the PREVENT Dementia Investigators., The relative contribution of modifiable and non-modifiable factors for determining cognition in mid-life individuals at risk for late-life Alzheimer's disease., Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring, 2026, Journal Article, PUBLISHED  URL
Deng F, Ritchie K, Muniz-Terrera G, Malhotra P, Ritchie CW, Lawlor B, Naci L*, Genetic risk of late-onset Alzheimer's disease is associated with longitudinal loss of functional brain network segregation in middle-aged cognitively healthy individuals: The PREVENT-Dementia Study., Communications Biology, 2026, Journal Article, IN_PRESS  URL
Szocs D, Luppi AI, Williams GB, Allanson J, Pickard JD, Owen AM, Naci L, Menon DK, Stamatakis EA., Mapping the human basal ganglia circuitry in pathological and pharmacological unconsciousness., Brain, 2026, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Szocs D, Lyu D, Luppi AI, Coppola P, Woodrow R, Williams GB, Allanson J, Pickard JD, Owen AM, Naci L, Menon DK, Stamatakis EA., A novel thalamic perspective of (un)consciousness in pharmacological and pathological states in humans., Brain Communications, 2026, Journal Article, IN_PRESS
  

Page 1 of 12
Lorina Naci, The effect of risk and protective factors for brain health in midlife, Inaugural North-South Dementia Research Symposium, Trinity College, 05 June, 2026, Dementia Research Network Ireland, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Lorina Naci, Building Momentum in Dementia Through Research, 36th Alzheimer Europe Conference, Convention Centre Dublin, 27"29 October, 2026, Alzheimer Europe, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Qing Qi, Lorina Naci, Connectome-based predictions of cognition and associations with cardiovascular dementia risk and lifestyle activities in mid-life, Canadian Society for Psychophysiological Research Annual Meeting, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 14-17 October, 2026, Canadian Society for Psychophysiological Research, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Lorina Naci, Longitudinal Functional connectivity in PREVENT, PREVENT General Assembly, Cambridge, UK, 8-9 September, 2026, University of Cambridge, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Emma Whooley, Lorina Naci, Fiona Wilson, Influence of playing rugby on long-term cognitive health following retirement: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis, Sportskongres, Copenhagen, Denmark, 29-31 January, 2026, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Lorina Naci, Fiona Wilson, Brain Health in Retired Contact Sports Athletes in Midlife, Harvard University Football Players Health Study Colaborations Meeting, 25 May, 2026, Harvard Football Players Health Study Steering Group, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Lorina Naci, Typical and disrupted brain architecture for conscious awareness in full-term and preterm neonates, Forum fof Consciouness Research, Oslo, Norway, 4/03/2026, 2026, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Axel AS Laurell, Maria-Eleni Dounavi, Audrey Low, Elijah Mak, Maja Swirska, Graciela Muniz-Terrera, Benjamin R Underwood, Yves Dauvilliers, Ivan Koychev, Brian A Lawlor, Lorina Naci, Paresh Malhotra, William Stewart, Craig W Ritchie, John T O"Brien, Traumatic brain injury, depression and sleep dysfunction in former professional rugby players., Alzheimer's Association International Conference, London UK, 06/07/2026, 2026, Poster, PUBLISHED
Qing Qi, Bolin Cao, Tommy Paltzer, Audrey Low, Charlotte Connolly, John T. O'Brien, Ivan Koychev, Paresh Malhotra, Katie Bridgeman, Craig W. Ritchie, Brian Lawlor, Lorina Naci, Sex differences in the associations of reserve contributors and socio-economic deprivation with cognition in mid-life individuals at risk for late-life dementia, Alzheimer Association International Conference, London UK, 6/7/2026, 2026, Poster, PUBLISHED
Whooley, E., Cunningham, J., Broglio, S., Verhagen, E., Naci, L., & Wilson, F. (2026)., Systematic review of the effect of professional rugby playing on cognitive function: implications for late-life dementia, Alzheimers Association Annual Meeting, London, UK, 2026, Poster, PUBLISHED

  


Page 1 of 17
Award Date
Keynote for Alzheimer Europe conference, organized by Alzheimer Europe - the umbrella organisation of 44 national Alzheimer's associations from 39 European countries - with > 1500 delegates expected, to be held at the Convenvetion Centre in Dublin 31/10/2026
Nominated for the Trinity Research Excellence Award 2026
Wikipedia"s `Science Highlights of 2023" 2023
Best Paper of the Year Prize, School of Psychology 2023
Fellow of Trinity College Dublin 24/04/2023
Featured on Wikipedia by the Permanent Canadian Mission to UNESCO 2019
Featured in undergraduate textbook: 'Cognitive Psychology: connecting mind, research, and everyday experience'; 5th edition E. Bruce Goldstein 2018 2018
Selected for the "Women in Science Leadership" meeting in Kigali Rwanda, by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research 2018
L'Oréal-Unesco for Women In Science International Rising Talents Award 2017
Academic Achievement Award, Albanian Canadian Excellence Award, Canada 2017
L'Oréal for Women in Science Research Excellence Fellowship, with the support of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO 2016
Selected for the Women in Science Leadership workshop, in Banff Canada, by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. 2016
Postdoctoral Scholar of the Year, Western University, Canada. 2016
Distinguished Person of the Year, Albanian Diaspora of Canada, Canada. 2015
One of Best 51 Discoveries Since 1878, Western University, Canada. 2014
Graduate Fellowship ($300,000; 3% success rate), Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, USA 2004-2010
Travel Grant Award ($1500), Brain (the Journal), UK. 2009; 2010
Marie Curie Trainee Award ($10,000), Marie Curie School for Neuroscience, Italy. 2008
Clare College Graduate Student Grant (£1,000), Clare College, University of Cambridge, UK 2008
Grindley Research Grant (£2,000), Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK. 2008
Cambridge Philosophical Society Travel Grant (£500), University of Cambridge, UK. 2007-2008
Graduate Presentation Award (2% success), Cognitive Neuroscience Society, USA. 2007
Travel Fellowship Award ($750), Organization for Human Brain Mapping, USA 2006
Grindley Travel Grant (£800), Experimental Psychology Society, UK. 2006
Chibnall Travel Grant (£1,000), Clare College, University of Cambridge, UK. 2006
Richard B. Russell Leadership Fellow, University of Georgia (UGA), USA. 2003
MSc Research Award ($50,000), GlaxoSmithKline Inc., UK 2002
All-Americal Scholar Collegiate Award, University of Georgia, USA. 2002
Presidential Scholar, University of Georgia, USA 2001-2002
Phi Beta Kappa Honour Society, University of Georgia, USA. 2001
Foundation Fellowship Award ($100,000; 0.5% success rate), UGA, USA. 2000
In the last two years, Professor Naci has obtained as lead PI €995,990 in competitive grant funding, including the HRB Investigator-Led Project Award (PI; €447,390; 2024), and the Alzheimer's Society UK Project Award (Co-PI; £399,603; 2024). She is currently leading a €31,5 million application for a Research Centre called `Optimizing Brain Health Across the Lifespan (TITAN)", to the Research Ireland Centres Programme. Her SFI `Frontiers for the Future Award" application (PI, €1 million), received a `fundable' score, with the decision outcome forthcoming in December, 2024. In the last two years, she has published 37 peer-reviewed papers, with an additional 11 pre-prints in peer-review, in leading international journals. Professor Naci has pioneered ground-breaking work that detected consciousness in individuals considered to be in a 'vegetative state.' She was the first to pioneer a neuroimaging brain-computer interface using auditory attention (Naci et al. 2012;2013;2014;2016;2017;2022). She discovered that several patients, clinically diagnosed as `vegetative state' for over 12 years, could correctly answer multiple questions by simply attending to the word `yes" or `no". Her work has enabled some individuals, who were thought to be unconscious for several years, to communicate with their families. The impact of the work of Professor Naci and her collaborators is apparent in a change of clinical practice guidelines by the American Academy of Neurology (2018) and the European Academy of Neurology (2020), recommending that neuroimaging be used to help determine clinical diagnosis in the absence of behavioural evidence of consciousness. Additionally, her work was featured in several (7) international policy guidelines. E.g., by the UK Parliament Research Briefings (07/2022; Naci and Owen, 2013), by the German Working Group of Scientific Medical Societies (2023; Graham et al. 2018), and by the Government of Catalonia (2023; Abladmalak et al. 2023) among others. Her recent senior-authored article Deng et al. (2023) was featured on the front page of `Anaesthesiology News", the most widely read publication for the specialty for the last 25 years, and delivered free of charge to all 56,181 anaesthesiologists and anaesthesiology residents in the USA. Professor Naci"s work has also been cited in several (9) USA patents on brain- and human-computer interfaces and devices that monitor treatment compliance. Professor Naci is the lead PI the Dublin site of PREVENT-Dementia, the world's largest study investigating the origins and early diagnosis of dementia. As a Member of the Steering Group of the `PREVENT Dementia International Consortium', she has have facilitated the training of over 22 PhD students and postdoctoral fellows across the five study sites, over 40 publications in esteemed peer-reviewed journals, and €2.5 million in additional grant funding to the consortium.