Tamara (PhD) is Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Mind and Brain and directs the Laboratory for the Cognitive Neuroscience of Language at the University of California, Davis. She received her PhD degree from the Radboud University and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her research program focuses on the psychological and neural mechanisms of language comprehension in young and older adults. She also models individual differences in language processing as a function of measures of cognitive control, working memory, perceptual speed and language experience. Finally, she examines how language processing mechanisms break down in patients with circumscribed lesions and in individuals with neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia.

Her research capitalizes on multiple research methods to gain the deepest possible understanding of the psychological processes and brain mechanisms that we use to extract meaning from text and conversation. These research methods include eyetracking (collaboratively), and the recording of brain electrical activity (ERPs) and hemodynamic responses (functional magnetic resonance imaging — fMRI), as well as a variety of other behavioral measures. Her research program has been supported since 1997 by grants from the McDonnell-Pew Foundation, NSF, and NIMH.