Constantinos Eleftheriou
I'm a postdoctoral research fellow in Prof Ian Duguid's group at the Simons Intitiative for the Developing Brain, University of Edinburgh. I'm interested in the neural mechanisms of learning, how they break down in neurodevelopmental disorders and whether higher cognitive processes are amendable to therapeutic intervention.
Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences
Hugh Robson Building
George Square
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
I received a BSc in Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh in 2018 with First Class honours. My undergraduate research project was supervised by Dr Cyril Pernet at the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, where I investigated language processing in stroke patients with Wernicke’s aphasia using fMRI and computational modelling.
In 2018, I joined the Duguid Lab as a PhD student to study visuomotor learning deficits in a mouse model of Rett syndrome. My PhD was funded by a joint studentship from the Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain and the University of Edinburgh Principal’s Career Development Scholarship. I graduated in 2023; my thesis titled “Visuomotor learning in Rett syndrome” won that year’s Alison Douglas Prize for best PhD thesis in the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences.
My current research aims to understand the nature of visuomotor learning deficits in Rett Syndrome, a devastating neurodevelopmental disorder caused by mutations in the Mecp2 gene. I use behavioural assays in tandem with mesoscale calcium imaging of the dorsal cortex to investigate the evolution of interareal neural dynamics across learning and their breakdown in Rett Syndrome. In collaboration with Prof Stuart Cobb, we aim to establish whether such deficits can be rescued with gene therapy.
I am also interested in software sustainability and the management of large datasets in research, leveraging my past experience in systems administration and software development.
