Dr. Sahba Besharati
Senior Lecturer & Clinical Neuropsychologist University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Postdoctoral Fellow University of the Witwatersrand
PhD Kings College London, England & University of Cape Town, South Africa
As a student at the University of Cape Town, Dr. Sahba Besharati was focused on political science until a handful of psychology lectures knocked her off her feet. The lecturer was Professor Mark Solms, a renowned South African neuroscientist, though Sahba didn’t know that at first. She was initially unimpressed as he showed up late for his lecture, looking a bit ‘grubby’ and without any prepared slides, but then he started talking with such an infectious love and enthusiasm for the brain and its many capacities that she was transfixed. She was especially inspired by the utility of neuropsychology for understanding ourselves and what makes us human, and this pursuit continues to motivate her research to this day. As the Co-Director of the Wits Neuroscience Research Laboratory (Wits NeuRL), Sahba studies social and embodied cognition to understand what makes (or breaks) one’s sense of self.
In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Sahba was so captivated by the field of neuropsychology. In fact, she reflects, “disorders of the brain have really shaped who I am.” People in her family suffered from neurological disorders, which were often stigmatized and little discussed. That upbringing likely drove her in an initially more clinical direction. However, as a neuropsychologist in training, she found it difficult when she had little further to offer to patients after providing a diagnosis. Realizing how little was understood about the causes of and effective interventions for many of those disorders, she decided to pursue graduate training in research that could help inform clinical practice. But as she progressed, she became increasingly enamored with research as its own enterprise.
For her graduate research, Sahba studied a little-known disorder called anosognosia, which means “unawareness of deficit”. In some patients that experience paralysis on the left side of their body following a stroke in the right hemisphere of their brains, they continue to believe that they can move just fine (known as “anosognosia for hemiplegia”, or AHP). In other cases, they may believe that parts of their body belong to somebody else. Broadly speaking, these patients have a disordered sense of embodied self, and Sahba sought to understand what specific social and emotional processes in the brain were impacted. For centuries, lesion studies like these have been useful for studying causation in the human brain. More recently, the addition of modern experimental and neuroimaging techniques are helping scientists understand which brain areas are damaged and how other regions and cognitive processes may also be affected. At the time Sahba was starting her PhD, the University of Cape Town lacked these neuroimaging capabilities, and so she moved to London to gain additional specialized training. Professor Katerina Fotopoulou at King’s College London took Sahba under her tutelage and trained her in those methods in a clinical setting. Through this training and a fruitful collaboration between researchers at the University of Cape Town, King’s College London, and University College London, Sahba amassed imaging and cognition data from the largest sample of people with AHP to date. Using detailed neuroimaging to map subjects’ specific lesions as well as extensive cognitive testing, she found that individuals with AHP also exhibited social cognitive deficits in perspective-taking, likely contributing to their overall lack of bodily self-awareness.
During her time in London, Sahba was also completing internships in hospitals to wrap up her clinical training. One particular internship in the child development unit of a University College London hospital got her thinking intently about the similarities between a young, immature brain and an older, disordered brain. Thus, for a postdoc, she was motivated to study how one’s sense of self is acquired during development, in contrast to her PhD studies of how one’s sense of self is lost. She also decided to move back to South Africa – this time to Johannesburg – even though there was still very little neuroimaging capacity available. She did her best to adapt her research goals to the available resources and opportunities. This led her to the University of Witwatersrand (“Wits”) to work with Professors Linda Richtner and Kate Cockcroft on longitudinal studies of South African individuals from birth into adulthood. Sahba continues to be involved in these lengthy and ambitious studies. From these massively rich datasets, Sahba takes particular interest in the adolescent period – for instance, how and when individuals’ sense of self becomes more formalized and concrete.
Now a faculty member herself at Wits, Sahba runs her own research program within the larger Wits Neuroscience Research Laboratory, or Wits NeuRL, which she co-founded and continues to co-direct with Kate. Wits NeuRL is both a physical lab and a ‘metaphysical’ one that seeks to build a greater neuroscience community and capacity in South Africa, across the African continent, and wherever resources for neuroscience research are lacking. Sahba’s own research program in the Social-Affective Neuroscience Lab is particularly focused on embodied cognition, or how a physical body influences one’s intangible sense of self. Although abstract, she notes that this topic may prove especially relevant in this era of artificial intelligence, where debate abounds about the cognitive and conscious capacities of technology that lacks a physical body. To study embodied cognition, her lab utilizes immersive virtual reality as well as experimental cognitive neuroscience techniques like EEG. Just as our senses of self are embedded in the context of our bodies, Sahba’s research program and questions are inextricably linked with her broader environment and community in South Africa. For instance, her group is conducting the largest study to date of immersive virtual reality with Black participants. They are also working with an international team of collaborators to study cultural differences in neural processing of affective touch. This was inspired in part by her own experiences in the UK, where customs around affective touch differ significantly from her native South Africa.
In addition to her research and efforts to broaden the accessibility of neuropsychological research, Sahba is passionate about fighting against the persistent challenges facing women in science. From her own experiences of getting married and having children while trying to advance her career and be taken seriously as a young woman in science—perhaps especially as a woman of color raised, educated and working on the African continent—she’s acutely aware of the work that still lies ahead to reshape attitudes and dismantle systemic barriers. To those ends and more, Sahba believes in being more than a mentor. She strives to be a “champion”, someone who actively advocates for her trainees and colleagues. By also advocating for diversity in who can carry out, participate in, and benefit from science, Sahba is not just a world expert on embodied cognition but also the embodiment of a “champion” in the broadest sense.
Find out more about Sahba and her lab’s research here.
Listen to Margarida’s full interview with Sahba on April 1, 2025 below!
