Martina Maria Tarantini is a researcher in the School of Academic Psychiatry at King’s College London, working on neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative conditions, including a multi-centre clinical trial investigating Cannabidiol (CBD) for Parkinson’s disease psychosis. Her research interests focus on complex sound processing, communication, and the cognitive and neuropsychiatric mechanisms affected in neurodegenerative disorders.

She completed her MSc in Clinical Neuroscience at the Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London (UCL), where her master’s dissertation in the AND-PD team examined the relationship between anxiety, attention, and motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease. She also holds a BSc in Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience from Royal Holloway, University of London, where her research explored perceptual weighting strategies across different aspects of speech and music in different populations (language groups, individuals with autistic traits and musicians).

Martina Maria has worked as a research assistant in bioacoustics and cultural evolution, analysing large datasets and spectrograms of complex sounds, and gained clinical research experience at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (NHNN) and UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology.

As a professional violinist, she draws on her musical background to inform her fascination with sound, communication, and underlying mechanisms in neurodegenerative disorders, with plans to further her research through a PhD.

Research interests

• Complex sound processing (speech, language and music)
• Neurodegenerative disorders
• Neural and cognitive bases of auditory perception