Natasha Mead has been a Research Assistant for the Centre for Neuroscience in Education since it opened in 2005. She is currently working on the BabyRhythm project. Before this Natasha tested the efficacy of "GraphoGame Rime" (sponsored by European Commission Marie Curie Excellence Grants, Education Endowment Foundation and the Wellcome Trust) as part of that project, as well as the Auditory Processing in Dyslexic Children (MRC) project.
Biography
Natasha received her BSc in Psychology from the Open University, while tutoring children between the ages of five and sixteen in English and Mathematics.
Publications
Power, A. J., Colling, L. C., Mead, N., Barnes, L., & Goswami, U. (2016). Neural encoding of the speech envelope by children with developmental dyslexia. Brain & Language, 160, 1-10. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.bandl.2016.06.006
Goswami, U., Huss, M., Mead, N., Fosker, T., & Verney, J. (2013). Perception of Patterns of Musical Beat Distribution in Phonological Developmental Dyslexia: Significant Longitudinal Relations with Word Reading and Reading Comprehension. Cortex, 49, 1363-1376. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2012.05.005
Goswami, U., Mead, N., Fosker, T., Huss, M., Barnes, L., & Leong, V. (2013). Impaired perception of syllable stress in children with dyslexia: A longitudinal study. Journal of Memory and Language, 69(1), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2013.03.001
Power, A. J., Mead, N., Barnes, L., & Goswami, U. (2013). Neural entrainment to rhythmic speech in children with developmental dyslexia. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7(777), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00777
Goswami, U., Fosker, T., Huss, M., Mead, N., & Szűcs, D. (2011). Rise time and formant transition duration in the discrimination of speech sounds: The Ba-Wa distinction in developmental dyslexia. Developmental Science, 14, 34-43. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.00955.x
Goswami, U., Wang, H-L. S., Cruz, A., Fosker, T., Mead, N., & Huss, M. (2011). Language-universal sensory deficits in developmental dyslexia: English, Spanish, and Chinese. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 325-337. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2010.21453
Huss, M., Verney, J. P., Fosker, T., Mead, N., & Goswami, U. (2011). Music, rhythm, rise time perception and developmental dyslexia: Perception of musical meter predicts reading and phonology. Cortex, 47, 674-689. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2010.07.010
Ní Choisdealbha, Á., Attaheri, A., Rocha, S., Brusini, P., Mead, N., Gibbon, S., Olawole-Scott, H., Boutris, P., Williams, I., Ahmed, H., Grey, C., Flanagan, S., & Goswami, U. (2020, July 5-9). The development of amplitude rise time detection in the first year [Poster presentation]. International Congress of Infant Studies.
Ní Choisdealbha, Á., Attaheri, A., Rocha, S., Mead, N., Gibbon, S., Olawole-Scott, H., Boutris, P., Flanagan, S., Williams, I., Ahmed, H., Grey, C., Brusini, P., & Goswami, U. (2020, July 5-9). Changes in neural rhythmic entrainment during the first year of life [Symposium talk]. International Congress of Infant Studies.
Rocha, S., Attaheri, A., Ní Choisdealbha, Á., Brusini, P., Flanagan, S., Mead, N., Boutris, P., Gibbon, S., Olawole-Scott, H., Ahmed, H., & Goswami, U. (2020, January 8-10). Infant gross motor rhythmic synchronisation and relationships with language [Poster presentation]. 10th Annual CEU Conference on Cognitive Development, Budapest, Hungary.
Rocha, S., Attaheri, A., Ní Choisdealbha, Á., Brusini, P., Flanagan, S., Mead, N., Boutris, P., Gibbon, S., Olawole-Scott, H., Ahmed, H., & Goswami, U. (2020, July 5-9). BabyRhythm: Early infant audio-motor rhythmic synchronisations predicts later language outcomes [Poster presentation]. International Congress of Infant Studies.
Attaheri, A., Ní Choisdealbha, Á., Liberto, G.M., Brusini, P., Rocha, S., Flanagan, S., Mead, N., Boutris, P., Gibbon, S., Olawole-Scott, H., Ahmed, H., Williams, I., & Goswami, U. (2019, October 19-23) Neural Oscillations and nursery rhymes; An EEG study into individual differences in infant language development [Poster presentation]. Society for Neuroscience, Chicago, IL, USA.
Ní Choisdealbha, Á., Attaheri, A., Brusini, P., Rocha, S., Flanagan, S., Mead, N., Boutris, P., Gibbon, S., Scott, H., Ahmed, H., & Goswami, U. (2019, June 13-15). Individual differences in auditory entrainment to speech and nonspeech rhythm by infants and relations with early language development [Poster presentation]. Workshop on Infant Language Development, Potsdam, Germany.
Brusini, P., Attaheri, A., Rocha, S., Flanagan, S., Mead, N., Boutris, P., & Goswami, U. (2018, June 27-29) BabyRhythm: An early neural window into infant language skills [Poster presentation]. International Neurogonomics Conference, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Rocha, S., Attaheri, A., Ní Choisdealbh, A., Brusini, P., Mead, N., Olawole-Scott, H., Boutris, P., Gibbon, S., Flannagan, S., & Goswami, U. (2018, September 21). The BabyRhythm Project: Looking longitudinally at early rhythmic skill and language development [Presentation]. BASIS Annual Scientific Meeting, London, UK.
Cutini, S., Szűcs, D., Mead, N., Huss, M., & Goswami, U. (2016). Atypical right hemisphere response to slow temporal modulations in children with developmental dyslexia. NeuroImage, 143, 40-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.08.012
Goswami, U., Barnes, L., Mead, N., Power, A. J., & Leong, V. (2016). Prosodic Similarity Effects in Short-Term Memory in Developmental Dyslexia. Dyslexia, 22(4), 287-304. https://doi.org/10.1002/dys.1535
Power, A., Mead, N., Barnes, L., & Goswami, U. (2013). Erratum: Neural entrainment to rhythmically-presented auditory, visual and audio-visual speech in children. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 905. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00905
Power, A. J., Mead, N., Barnes, L., & Goswami, U. (2012). Neural entrainment to rhythmically presented auditory, visual, and audio-visual speech in children. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 216. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00216
Stefanics, G., Fosker, T., Huss, M., Mead, N., Szücs, D., & Goswami, U. (2011). Auditory sensory deficits in developmental dyslexia: A longitudinal ERP study. Neuroimage, 57, 723–732. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.04.005
Other Professional Activities
In 2018 Natasha presented a poster titled "Baby Rhythm - The Neuroscience of Language Acquisition" at the concluding policy event of The Educated Brain series in Westminster, London.
Natasha has played a major role in many of CNE's outreach events over the years, including at five Cambridge Science Festivals and a Cambridge BRAINFest event.
