Professor Natasha Sigala
Professor Natasha Sigala
Professor in Neuroscience (Clinical Neuroscience)
Email: n.sigala@sussex.ac.uk
Self-awareness, executive functions and interoception in Acquired Brain Injury
Impaired self-awareness is one of the most clinically significant consequences of acquired brain injury (ABI), undermining engagement with rehabilitation, functional recovery, and long-term quality of life. Although executive dysfunction and poor insight frequently co-occur following damage to the prefrontal cortex, the relationship between these deficits is neither uniform nor fully understood. Evidence suggests that specific executive processes – including cognitive flexibility, error monitoring, and working memory – relate differentially to distinct dimensions of self-awareness, with notable dissociations across individuals and clinical populations.
A growing body of research implicates interoception – the perception and processing of internal bodily signals – as a potentially critical but underexplored contributor to self-awareness after brain injury. The anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex, regions central to interoceptive processing, are also consistently implicated in metacognitive monitoring and error detection.
This PhD will investigate the contributions of executive functions and interoception to self-awareness in individuals with acquired brain injury. The candidate will combine behavioural and neuropsychological assessment of executive functions and self-awareness with established interoceptive paradigms to characterise the contributions of these processes to different dimensions of insight. The project offers an opportunity to work across clinical and academic settings, with access to ABI patient populations through established clinical partnerships, in a supportive and interdisciplinary research environment at Brighton and Sussex Medical School.
Key references
- Fleming JM, Strong J, Ashton R. Self-awareness of deficits in adults with traumatic brain injury: how best to measure? Brain Inj. 1996 Jan;10(1):1-15. doi: . PMID: 8680388.
- Medford N, Critchley HD. Conjoint activity of anterior insular and anterior cingulate cortex: awareness and response. Brain Struct Funct. 2010 Jun;214(5-6):535-49. doi: . Epub 2010 May 29. PMID: 20512367; PMCID: PMC2886906.
- Pettemeridou E, Lofitou K, Solomou I, Charalambous M, Ioannou M, Lori A, Papacostas SS, Pantzaris M, Constantinidou F. Improving Self-Awareness in Chronic Moderate-Severe Acquired Brain Injury: The Social Cognitive Communication Intervention Combined With Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation. Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2025 Jul 10;34(4):2228-2243. . Epub 2025 Jun 30. PMID: 40587364.
Visit for more details and a full list of publications.