Rate My Professor Patricia Michie

Emeritus Professor Patricia Michie is an experimental psychologist at the University of Newcastle in the School of Psychological Sciences, College of Engineering, Science and Environment. She earned her PhD from Macquarie University and Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the University of New England. Her career trajectory includes serving as Professor of Psychology at the University of Western Australia in 2001, Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia from 1995 to 2000, Associate Professor at Macquarie University School of Behavioural Sciences in 1995, and Senior Lecturer there from 1985 to 1994. She is affiliated with the Priority Research Centre for Brain and Mental Health Research and has supervised 23 PhD and Masters students to completion between 1999 and 2025.

Michie's research centers on the neural basis of normal and abnormal cognition, with a particular emphasis on cognitive deficits in schizophrenia and at-risk populations. She employs psychophysical methods and functional brain imaging techniques, including event-related potentials and mismatch negativity (MMN), to study auditory processing deficits, impaired inhibitory control, and cognitive control. As part of the Australian team, she contributed to the first demonstration of impaired automatic change detection in schizophrenia using MMN, now a widely replicated robust neurobiological marker, and has applied MMN in animal models of schizophrenia. Notable publications include 'Mismatch Negativity (MMN) as a Promising Translational Neurophysiological Biomarker in Schizophrenia' (2021), 'A Polygenic Resilience Score Moderates the Genetic Risk for Schizophrenia' (2021), 'Schizophrenia Risk from Complex Variation of Complement Component 4' (2016), and 'Theta Frontoparietal Networks Underlying Switch and Mixing Costs During Task-Switching' (2020). With over 200 peer-reviewed publications garnering more than 15,000 citations and over $9 million in national competitive grants, her work has significantly influenced cognitive neuroscience. Awards include the Lifetime Contribution Award from the Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society (2020), Distinguished Contribution to Psychological Science Award from the Australian Psychological Society (2016), and Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences. She chaired the National Committee of Brain and Mind of the Academy of Sciences Australia (2014–2017) and served as the inaugural Chair of the Australian Brain Alliance.