Skip to main content Skip to footer

Barbara Sahakian

College positions:
Emeritus Fellow
Subject:
Neuroscience
Department/institution:
Department of Psychiatry
Contact details:
bjs1001@cam.ac.uk

Professor Barbara Sahakian

Professor Barbara Sahakian is Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge.

She is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She is a past President of the International Neuroethics Society and of the British Association for Psychopharmacology. According to Research.com she is one of the very top researchers worldwide in the fields of Neuroscience and Psychology.

Professor Sahakian has over 550 publications in scientific journals, including Science, Nature and The Lancet. According to Google Scholar she has an h-index of 159. She has also been a leader in Government Policy on neuroscience and mental health, including on the UK Government Foresight Project on Mental Capital and Wellbeing and has spoken in Davos at the World Economic Forum in 2014.

She has co-authored two popular science books published by Oxford University Press Bad Moves: How Decision Making Goes Wrong and the Ethics of Smart Drugs and Sex, Lies & Brain Scans, which won the British Psychological Society Popular Book Award. She regularly writes for The Conversation.

Professor Sahakian is co-Inventor of the Cambridge Cognition CANTAB computerised cognitive tests which are used around the world and the PEAK Wizard Memory Game and Decoder Attention and Concentration Game. She is also co-inventor of the EMOTICOM computerized tests of social and emotional cognition. She holds PhD and DSc degrees from the University of Cambridge, and is also a Clinical Psychologist.

Select publications

  • See departmental profile as linked below.

Select awards

  • Fellow of the British Academy
  • Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences

Further links