Sophie Scott

Sophie Scott FMedSci (born 1966 or 1967) is a British neuroscientist and Wellcome Trust senior fellow at University College London (UCL), researching the neuroscience of voices, speech, and laughter. She is also Deputy Director of UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Scott was born in Blackburn, England. She received her PhD in Cognitive Science at UCL in 1994 and went on to work in Cambridge at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (formerly Applied Psychology Unit). She returned to UCL as a Research Fellow in 1998. She was awarded a Wellcome Trust Fellowship in 2001 and has been funded by them since. She currently holds a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellowship. She is a member of the British Psychological Society, the Society for Neuroscience, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and the Experimental Psychology Society. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2012.

Professor Scott is head of the Speech Communication Group at UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. Her research investigates the neural basis of vocal communication – how our brains process the information in speech and voices, and how our brains control the production of our voice. Within this, her research covers the roles of streams of processing in auditory cortex, hemispheric asymmetries, and the interaction of speech processing with attentional and working memory factors. Other interests include individual differences in speech perception and plasticity in speech perception, since these are important factors for people with cochlear implants. She is also interested in the expression of emotion in the voice. In particular, research in recent years has focused on the neuroscience of laughter.

Scott is known for her public engagement work, including performing standup comedy, and was featured in a September 2013 edition of the BBC Radio Four programme The Life Scientific. In March 2014, she was invited to give a Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution on the science of laughter. Her work on laughter has also toured science fairs and exhibitions as part of the Laughter_lab project. She has been awarded a UCL Provost's Award for Public Engagement.