Rate My Professor Maryam Ziaei

Ziaei’s research centers on aging neuroscience, with a focus on social cognition, emotion processing, and neural mechanisms supporting cognitive resilience in older adults. Her work utilizes advanced neuroimaging techniques, including 7T MRI, to investigate brain changes across the lifespan. Notable publications include "Age-Related Increase in Locus Ceruleus Activity and Functional Connectivity During Social Processing" (2025, Journal of Neuroscience), "Resilience-related neural similarity during naturalistic movie watching predicts future memory performance" (2026, Imaging Neuroscience), "Frontoparietal functional dedifferentiation during naturalistic movie watching in older adults" (2025, Neurobiology of Aging), "Age-related differences in negative cognitive empathy but preserved positive affective empathy" (2021, Brain Structure and Function, cited 41 times), and "Neural correlates of affective empathy in aging" (2022, Aging & Mental Health). She coordinates the course Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience (NEVR3003) and serves as the leader of the study programme council for the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Ziaei contributes to the Brain Health Programme and has given public lectures, such as at NTNU Kveld on brain mechanisms in aging. Her group participates in the Trondheim Aging Brain Study.