Scientific Personnel

Brief Bio

Marietta Papadatou-Pastou graduated from the Department of Psychology of the Panteion University, Athens, Greece. She further holds an MSc in Research Methods in Psychology (awarded with distinction) and a DPhil in Neuropsychology (full scholarship), both from the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK.

In 2014, Dr Papadatou-Pastou joined the faculty of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens as a Lecturer in “Neuropsychology and Language Functions” and in 2019 she became Assistant Professor. She is also an Affiliated Investigator of the Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens. Moreover, Dr. Papadatou-Pastou is an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS), a Chartered Psychologist by the BPS, and a Chartered Scientist by the BPS and the Science Council UK. She served as the Secretary General for the Hellenic Psychological Society (HPS; 2017-2019) and she is a co-director of the Neuropsychology Branch of the HPS since 2017.

Dr Papadatou-Pastou’s research interests include various aspects of neuropsychology, as well as cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology. Her work focuses on handedness and brain lateralization, using behavioral and brain imaging techniques (functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound [fTCD] and functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI]), in healthy individuals as well as populations with special education needs (students with dyslexia, hearing impaired students, students with low or high IQ and individuals with autism spectrum disorder). At the moment she is particularly interested in cerebral lateralization of written language, and she has secured a Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) grant to fund this line of inquiry. She has also worked in neuropsychopharmacology, using functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural and behavioral effects of antidepressant drug action and of mood induction on autobiographical memory. She is further interested in meta-science, with a special focus on meta-analysis. Moreover, Dr Papadatou-Pastou is a member of the Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA), where she has served as an Assistant Director for the Ethics Review Committee. Last but not least, she is interested in science outreach.

Dr Papadatou-Pastou publishes her work in international peer-reviewed journals, such as the Psychological Bulletin, Nature Human Behavior, NeuroImage, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, Scientific Reports, Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, Brain and Language, and Neuropsychologia. She has authored more than 63 publications (Scopus), her work has received more than 2800 citations and she has an H-Index of 28 (Google Scholar).

Selected Publications

1. Ocklenburg, S., Mundorf, A., Gerrits, R., Karlsson, E., Papadatou-Pastou, M. & Vingerhoets, G. (in press). Clinical implications of brain asymmetries. Nature Reviews Neurology
2. Papadopoulou, A.-K., Vlachos, F., Badcock, N. A., Phylactou, P., & Papadatou-Pastou, M. (2024). Exploring cerebral laterality of writing and the relationship to handedness: A functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound investigation. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, https://doi.org/10.1080/1357650X.2023.2284407.
3. Papadatou-Pastou, M., Papadopoulou, A.-K., Samsouris, C., Mundorf, A., Valtou, M.-M., Ocklenburg, S. (2023). Hand preference in stuttering: Meta-analyses. Neuropsychology Review, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11065-023-09617-z.
4. Packheiser, J., Papadatou-Pastou, M., Koufaki, A., Paracchini, S., Clara C. Stein, C. C., Schmitz, J., & Ocklenburg, S. (2023). Elevated levels of mixed-hand preference in dyslexia: Meta-analyses of 68 studies. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 154, 105420 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105420
5. Papadatou-Pastou, M., Sampanis, P., Koumzis, I., Stefanopoulou, S., Sousani, D., Tsigkou, A., & Badcock, N.A. (2022). Cerebral laterality for writing in right- and left-handers: A functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound study. European Journal of Neuroscience, 56(2), 3921-3937 https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.15723
6. Westerhausen, R., & Papadatou-Pastou, M. (2021). Handedness and midsagittal corpus callosum morphology: A meta-analytic evaluation. Brain Structure and Function. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-021-02431-4
   Papadatou-Pastou, M., Ntolka, E., Schmitz, J., Martin, M., Munafo, M. R., Ocklenburg, S., & Paracchini, S. (2020). Human handedness: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 146(6): 481-524.  https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000229
7. Jones, B. C., DeBruine, L. M., Flake, J., K., … Papadatou-Pastou, M., ...Chartier, C. (2021). Social perception of faces around the world: To which world regions does the valence-dominance model of social perception apply? Nature Human Behavior, 5, 159-160. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01007-2
8. Packheiser, J., Schmitz, J., Berretz, G., Carey, D., Paracchini, S., Papadatou-Pastou, M., & Ocklenburg, S. (2020). Four meta-analyses across 164 studies on atypical footedness prevalence and its relation to handedness.  Scientific Reports, 10, 14501. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-71478-w
9. Ntolka, E., & Papadatou-Pastou, M. (2018). Right-handers have negligibly higher IQ scores than left-handers: Systematic review and meta-analyses. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 84,376-393.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.08.007
10. Papadatou-Pastou, M., & Martin, M. (2017). Cerebral laterality for language is related to adult salivary testosterone levels but not digit ratio (2D: 4D) in men: A functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound study. Brain and Language, 166, 52-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2016.12.002
11. Papadatou-Pastou, M., & Sáfár, A. (2016). Handedness prevalence in the deaf: Meta-analyses. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. 60, 98-114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.11.013
12. Papadatou-Pastou, M., Miskowiak, K., Williams, J. M. G., & Harmer, C.J. (2012). Acute antidepressant drug administration and autobiographical memory recall: An fMRI study. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 25(5), 364-372. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0027969

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