Balpreet Malli

Balpreet was a previous student at the University of Westminster and graduated in 2021. As a student who had to move to online teaching as a result of the pandemic, Balpreet looked into the effects of sonic qualities on the listeners' experience for her dissertation, completing her BSc in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience. 

After that, Balpreet continued to study Clinical Neuroscience MSc at UCL. Here, she was able to explore the effects on cognition in various clinical populations which led to her dissertation exploring functional activation in neonates to establish a baseline to then compare with neonates who had HIE or were premature using BNIRS.

Now, Balpreet is completing her PhD exploring and identifying the cognitive effects of digital listening and how to accommodate everyone as the world continues to be a hybrid environment. Her supervisors are Catherine Loveday, Haiko Ballieux, and Karen Bunday.

The research looks particularly at the listeners' engagement and experience. This includes understanding how different sonic qualities can affect the listener’s attention, memory and mood when listening to voice online, also including diverse populations - i.e., ABI, non-native English speakers, ASD and ADHD - to learn if they are more or less susceptible to changes in engagement with digital listening.

Other interests include acquired brain injury, neuromonitoring, music cognition, auditory experiences, differences in the listening experience of music and voice and the effects of neurodiversity (e.g., ASD, ADHD & ABI) in auditory experiences.

Outside of education, Balpreet has continued to learn more about the impacts of acquired brain injuries (ABI). She has been involved with Headway West London for three years, primarily involved with their health and wellbeing programme, which aimed to educate ABI survivors about how the brain works pre and post-injury and how they can then manage specific symptoms better.

• The Effects of Sonic Quality in Music and Voice on the Listener's Experience (BSc Dissertation) with Prof Catherine Loveday (2020-21).
• Neural Functional Activation in Neonates (MSc Dissertation) with Prof Subhabrata Mitra, Dr Kelly Harvey-Jones, Dr Fredric Lange, Dr Ilias Tachtsidis & Team (2021-22). _{Initial findings were submitted as a poster at the Society of fNIRS conference in Boston 2022.}