Research page of Karolina Janacsek, PhD

Karolina Janacsek, PhD

Associate Professor

Director of Adaptive Minds Lab - Learning, Development and Health

ILD Centre for Thinking and Learning, School of Human Sciences, University of Greenwich, Greenwich

INTRODUCTION

I am an Associate Professor at the University of Greenwich and Director of the Adaptive Minds Lab.

My research investigates the fundamental mechanisms of human learning, memory, and adaptation.

At the core of my work is statistical learning—the powerful, often non-conscious ability to extract patterns and regularities from our environment. This process is foundational to perception, language acquisition, and motor skills, making it a vital aspect of life from infancy to old age. However, in a rapidly changing world, simply extracting patterns is not enough. My research places a critical emphasis on how we update our knowledge as environmental regularities shift. This capacity for updating is the key to cognitive flexibility and successful human adaptation.

I adopt a strong lifespan developmental perspective, utilising both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs to map how the neurocognitive organisation of learning and updating evolves across the human life cycle. By understanding how these processes are disrupted in neurodevelopmental and clinical disorders, my goal is to translate basic cognitive neuroscience into effective training and intervention strategies.

RESEARCH PROJECTS

Age-related differences in statistical learning and knowledge updating across the lifespan

The goals of this line of research are to 1) better understand how children acquire and update knowledge about patterns and regularities embedded in their environment, 2) characterise how other, automatic or controlled, cognitive processes (e.g., executive functions, prior knowledge) shape learning and updating, and 3) track how learning and updating abilities change from childhood to adulthood and old age.

Learning and updating in neurodevelopmental disorders

The focus of this line of research is on understanding 1) how learning and updating of environmental regularities are altered in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, ADHD, Tourette Syndrome and childhood sleep disorders, and 2) how controlled vs. automatic cognitive processes may compensate for the altered functions to achieve normal behavioural performance.

Neurocognitive underpinnings of learning and updating

The goal of this line of research is to gain a better understanding of 1) the neurocognitive networks underlying the learning and updating of complex environmental regularities, and 2) how the contribution of these neural networks changes depending on the way of information processing (e.g., controlled vs. automatic), using various methods such as fMRI, EEG and non-invasive brain stimulation.

KEY PUBLICATIONS

Tóth-Fáber, E., Farkas, B. C., Tánczos, T., Németh, D., & Janacsek, K. (under revision). Longitudinal evidence for decreasing statistical learning abilities across childhood. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gj3hq

Toth-Faber, E., Nemeth, D., & Janacsek, K. (2023). Lifespan developmental invariance in memory consolidation: evidence from procedural memory. PNAS Nexus, 2 (3), pgad037. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad037

Janacsek, K., Evans, T., Kiss, M., Shah, L., Blumenfeld, H., & Ullman, M. T. (2022). Subcortical cognition: the fruit below the rind. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 45, 361-386, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-neuro-110920-013544

Horvath, K., Nemeth, D., & Janacsek, K. (2022). Inhibitory control hinders habit change. Scientific reports, 12, 8338. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11971-6

Park, J., Janacsek, K., Nemeth, D., & Jeon, H-A. (2022). Reduced functional connectivity supports statistical learning of temporally distributed regularities. NeuroImage, 160, 119459. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119459

Janacsek, K., Shattuck, K. F., Tagarelli, K. M., Lum, J. A., Turkeltaub, P. E., & Ullman, M. T. (2020). Sequence learning in the human brain: A functional neuroanatomical meta-analysis of serial reaction time studies. NeuroImage, 207, 116387. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.116387

Ullman, M. T., Earle, F. S., Walenski, M., & Janacsek, K. (2020). The neurocognition of developmental disorders of language. Annual review of psychology, 71, 389-417. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011555