MEET THE TEAM

Principal Investigator
Ian Gold
Ian Jeffery Gold is the head of the Neurophilosophy Lab. He is a Professor of Philosophy & Psychiatry at McGill University. He is also the Chair of the Department of Philosophy. His research focuses on psychological delusions, theory of mind, & reductionism in neuroscience and psychiatry. He has taught courses on the philosophy of neuroscience, the philosophy of psychiatry, and the philosophy of mind. Together with his brother, psychiatrist Joel Gold, he co-developed the idea of the Truman Show delusion and published the book "Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness".

Research Associate
Elizaveta Solomonova
I am an interdisciplinary researcher in McGill University’s Neurophilosophy Lab, at the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry. I am interested in neuroscience and phenomenology of conscious experiences across the sleep and wake states, including dreaming, hallucinatory phenomena, parasomnias, and altered states of consciousness. I have extensive experience in research on dreams, sleep, memory consolidation, and meditation practices. I have trained in cognitive neuroscience and in philosophy of mind, and I am particularly interested in hybrid states of consciousness, where waking and dreaming boundaries are blurred. My current projects are centred around questions of how the social world influences how and when people sleep, dream, and share experiences across cultures and social groups.

Research Associate
Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez
I am a medical doctor, interdisciplinary researcher and science communicator. My research interests are in the intersection of cognitive neuroscience, the humanities and social sciences. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Neurophilosophy Lab, I study the interactions between social categorization and Theory of Mind. Funded by SSHRC, one of my projects explores the use of literary fiction to reduce out-group biases and improve cross-cultural social cognition and empathy towards those in stigmatized groups. I am also an active collaborator in projects related to vaccine hesitancy, conspiracy theories and delusions. As a science communicator I have published more than 40 articles for Mexican and Canadian media and participated in podcasts and TV programs. I also wrote and directed "SINAPSIS: Connections between art and your brain", a series about art and the brain."

Master's Student
Maeve Boardman
I am a Master’s in Mental Health student in the Faculty of Psychiatry with a Bachelor’s degree in psychology. In my thesis work, I am using qualitative methods to examine the phenomenology of delusions in first-episode psychosis. I am particularly interested in the relationship of delusion formation to anomalous experiences.
Research Assistant
Lina Khayyat
I am a research assistant at the neurophilosophy lab, and I completed my master's degree at the Neurophilosophy Lab. My thesis looked at beliefs and values in the context of the pandemic. I am particularly interested in how different beliefs form, and how they vary across cultural contexts. I am also involved in the moral courage project at the lab, which explores dispositional and situational factors related to moral courage.

Research Assistant
Olivia Leone
I am a research assistant at the Neurophilosophy Lab where I also completed my master’s thesis as part of the Integrated Program in Neuroscience. My thesis work explored the use of natural language processing and computational linguistic methods for identifying markers of social cognition in speech. Currently, I continue this line of work while also working on a transcranial magnetic stimulation study investigating neural correlates of implicit Theory of Mind and a project using tools in computational speech analysis to study the psychology of moral courage. I hold a strong interest in understanding the cognitive architecture behind social cognition, particularly Theory of Mind, using a multidisciplinary approach.

Undergraduate Student
Katia Korneeva
I am an undergraduate student majoring in Psychology, currently completing my Independent Research Project on Theory of Mind at the Neurophilosophy Lab. My work involves contributing to the validation of the McGill Multiracial Face Database, while also examining differences in emotion recognition between static and dynamic stimuli. In addition, I hold a strong interest in research exploring Dreams and Perspective Taking in Dreams led by Dr. Solomonova.

Research Assistant
Johann Pacheco-Veissiere
I am a Research Assistant at the Neurophilosophy lab. I completed my BA&Sc. in cognitive sciences minoring in philosophy and religious studies at McGill. I underwent my honours research at the neurophilosophy lab, on the cognitive neuroscience of literary fiction. Currently I conduct our experiments which employ transcranial magnetic stimulation, as well as collecting neuroanatomical and qualitative interview data for a variety of our other projects. I am most interested in the relationships between the brain and phenomenology as it may be approached through what alters experience: psychopathology, sleep, art, meditation, and brain stimulation.

Lab Volunteer
Sara Toca
I recently graduated from McGill’s Honours Psychology program. My research interests are centered around cognition and how cognitive processes are affected by different forms of psychopathology. I am especially interested in memory distortions as well as the mechanisms underlying the development and maintenance of delusions. In the lab, I’m involved in research focusing on Capgras delusion as well as the relationship between social threat and delusions.

Research Assistant
Milton Rosenbaum
I am a research assistant at the McGill Neurophilosophy Lab. I graduated McGill with a BA in Philosophy and Computer Science. I contribute to various projects through coding and data analysis. I am interested in how misinformation becomes credible, and how beliefs propagate in misinformation saturated environments.

Undergraduate Student
Fiona Wright-Jones
I graduated from McGill University’s Honours Cognitive Science program with a focus in psychology. I’m broadly interested in sleep and dreams, memory, neuropsychology, and the cognitive implications of psychiatric illness. In the lab, I completed an honours thesis on sensory incorporation into dreams and worked on Theory of Mind projects using MRI and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Currently I'm examining perspective taking in dreams.
Research Assistant
Sophie Hoyer
I am a McGill undergraduate student and research assistant in the Neurophilosophy Lab. My projects primarily focus on Theory of Mind, employing both behavioural tasks and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

Lab-Affiliated Student
Andi Delphine Li
I am a medical student at McMaster University. Prior to medicine, I graduated from the University of Toronto with double majors in English Literature and Neuroscience. With an interdisciplinary educational background, I have always been interested in the intersection between the humanities and the brain. I am currently working with the Neurophilosophy Lab on a qualitative study exploring how interpretations of psychosis narratives shape perspective-taking and stigma-reduction.
