Rakshita Deshmukh

Rakshita is a third-year PhD student in the lab. She previously completed an MS by Research in Cognitive Science at IIT Kanpur, where she conducted her master’s thesis in the lab, and holds a BA in Psychology from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. During her master’s, she helped set up the lab’s human sleep research section, conducting overnight sleep studies while trying to get some sleep herself! Her master’s research examined how high trait anxiety can make noise look like actual change and how sleeping on it might just help! This work now forms the basis of her PhD research, in which she investigates the neural mechanisms underlying these effects and how N3 sleep may help restore adaptive learning under uncertainty. Outside the lab, Rakshita enjoys painting, binge-watching sci-fi series, getting lost in books, and fangirling over all things Marvel Cinematic Universe. She recently learned to swim and is excited to keep exploring the water, one lap at a time.