Rate My Professor Andrew Talk

Dr. Andrew Talk is a Senior Lecturer and Fourth Year Course Coordinator in the School of Psychology, Faculty of Medicine and Health, at the University of New England. He obtained his BA from Southwestern University, MS from Rutgers University, and PhD from Rutgers University. In his role at UNE, Talk coordinates the fourth-year psychology program and delivers courses such as Biopsychology (PSYC366 and PSYC466) and a fourth-year reading course focused on the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. His teaching emphasizes research methods in biopsychology and advanced topics in neural mechanisms of cognition.

Talk's research centers on the neurobiology of learning and memory, specifically the electrophysiological and biochemical processes involved in the storage and retrieval of information in the brain. He investigates neural changes associated with behaviourally silent learning, including sensory preconditioning and latent inhibition. His interests extend to biopsychology, neuropsychology, sleep's role in memory consolidation, eye movements in source memory, prefrontal cortex functions in encoding, claustrum involvement in reversal learning, and mechanisms of anti-predator behavior. Talk supervises honours and postgraduate students in these areas and has contributed public insights on the psychological benefits of naps.

He has produced a substantial body of peer-reviewed publications, including 'Mechanisms of anti-predator behavior in the great ramshorn snail' (PLOS ONE, 2024), 'Graded expression of source memory revealed by analysis of eye movements' (PLOS ONE, 2017), 'Preconditioning of Spatial and Auditory Cues' (Brain Sciences, 2016), 'The anterior claustrum and spatial reversal learning in rats' (Brain Research, 2013), and 'The prefrontal cortex is required for incidental encoding but not retrieval of context-associated objects' (Behavioural Brain Research, 2012). These works, supported by UNE faculty funding, have advanced understanding of memory processes and amassed nearly 1,000 citations across platforms like ResearchGate and Google Scholar.