Academy Fellow

Professor Greig de Zubicaray is a clinical and cognitive neuropsychologist who investigates the cognitive and neurobiological bases of language and its disorders. His principal contributions are in the field of neurolinguistics, a young and highly interdisciplinary field, with influences from fields such as psycholinguistics, psychology, aphasiology, cognitive science and neuroscience. He has also made significant contributions more broadly in the interdisciplinary field of cognitive neuroscience.

Professor de Zubicaray’s neuroimaging and neuromodulation work has identified brain regions associated with speech production and comprehension, and advanced our knowledge about how word meaning is represented in the brain. He has also broadened our clinical understanding about language recovery following treatment for brain tumours. He has also made significant contributions to multi-disciplinary research, identifying genetic and environmental influences on brain structure and function development as well as discovery of brain regions associated with polygenic risk for psychiatric and neurological disorders.

He has published over 300 papers in leading general science journals (Nature, Science, PNAS), experimental and theoretical psychology journals (JEP: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, JEP: General, Journal of Memory & Language, Cognition), and neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience journals (Human Brain Mapping, Cerebral Cortex, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience). Professor de Zubicaray’s expertise in researching language function and dysfunction is sought after by both mainstream and social media outlets. His 2023 article in The Conversation “Is it normal to forget words while speaking? And when can it spell a problem?” has been read over 420,000 times, quoted by multiple news outlets internationally and translated into French.

Professor de Zubicaray’s work has been funded continuously by the Australian Research Council (ARC) since 2003, and by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the USA, and philanthropic foundations. He is a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society and its College of Clinical Neuropsychologists. In 2016, he was elected Chair of the international Society for the Neurobiology of Language (SNL), the first Australian to hold this role. In recognition of his research standing internationally, he was made a member of the ARC College of Experts in 2019 and the Medical Research Advisory Group in 2022. He has been an Action Editor for leading journals in his field such as Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, and Brain and Language, and serves on various editorial boards. His impact on his discipline was recognised by his being invited to be both editor and contributor to a key reference textbook for the field, the Oxford Handbook of Neurolinguistics. 

Professor, School of Psychology and Counselling, Queensland university of Technology

Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society, Australian Psychological Society Early Career Award (2005)

1. de Zubicaray, G. & Schiller, N. O. (Eds.) (2019). The Oxford Handbook of Neurolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2. de Zubicaray, G. I., Krsmanovic, M., McMahon, K. L., Tolkacheva, V., & Arciuli, J. (2026). Brain mechanisms for processing systematic sound-to-meaning mappings for concrete and abstract concepts. Cortex, 202, 258–272.

3. Tolkacheva, V., Brownsett, S. L. E., McMahon, K. L., & de Zubicaray, G. I. (2024). Perceiving and misperceiving speech: lexical and sublexical processing in the superior temporal lobes. Cerebral Cortex, 34(3), bhae087.

4. de Zubicaray, G. I., McMahon, K. L., Arciuli, J., Kearney, E., & Guenther, F. H. (2023). Emotion from the sound of a word: Statistical relationships between surface form and valence of English words influence lexical access and memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 152(12), 3566-3593.

5. de Zubicaray, G. I., Arciuli, J., & McMahon, K. (2021). A sound explanation for motor cortex engagement during action word comprehension. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 33, 129-145.