Firat Soylu

Dr. Soylu is an Associate Professor of educational psychology and neuroscience at the College of Education. His research focuses on mathematical thinking and learning, math learning disability, and the evolutionary and bodily origins of cognitive skills, using behavioral, electrophysiological, neuroimaging and computational modeling methods. He studies diverse populations (e.g., typical, ASD, bilingual). He is eager to investigate biological mechanisms supporting cognition with interdisciplinary teams. Dr. Soylu lead the development of a PhD concentration and an undergraduate major in educational neuroscience, and is currently directing the undergraduate educational neuroscience program (http://elden.ua.edu).

Representative Publications

  1. Incongruity in Fraction Verification Elicits N270 And P300 ERP Effects. B. Rivera, F. Soylu, Neuropsychologia, 161:108015, 2021. 
  2. Gray matter volume in left inferior parietal sulcus predicts longitudinal gains in subtraction skill in elementary school. M. Suárez Pellicioni, F. Soylu, J. Booth, Neuroimage, 235:118021, 2021.
  3. Connecting Levels of Analysis in Educational Neuroscience. H. Han, F. Soylu, D.M. Anchan, Trends Neurosci Educ. 17:100113, 2019.
  4. ERP differences in processing canonical and noncanonical finger-numeral configurations. F. Soylu, B. Rivera, M. Anchan, N. Shannon, Neurosci Lett. 705:74–79, 2019.
  5. Gray Matter Correlates of Finger Gnosis in Children: A VBM Study. F. Soylu, R. Seo, M. Newman, S.D. Newman, Neuroscience, 404, 82–90, 2019.

Research Interests

Research in Dr. Soylu’s lab focuses on electrophysiological, structural, and functional brain correlates of mathematical skills and math learning disabilities, with particular emphasis on how the sensorimotor system grounds mathematical learning and processing. The lab also explores differences in number processing and the underlying neural correlates, across different populations (e.g., ASD, bilinguals).