A warm welcome

Hello — I’m Foyzul Rahman, a Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology at Loughborough University.

For years, colleagues encouraged me to create my own website. For years, I politely ignored them. Self-promotion has never come naturally to me, and the idea of “showcasing” my work always felt slightly uncomfortable. But here we are — this is my attempt at being a serious academic (with a healthy dose of reluctance and curiosity).

In a phrase, my work is about neurocognitive ageing. More specifically, this means that I try (and mostly fail) to understand one central question: why do people age so differently? Take two 60-year-olds, for example. One might show remarkably preserved working memory and a brain that looks much like that of a younger adult. The other may experience noticeable changes in cognition alongside clear signs of neural ageing. Chronologically, they are the same age — but biologically and cognitively, their trajectories can look very different.

Understanding what drives these differences is a central focus of my research. I’m interested in how lifestyle, physiology, and brain health interact across the lifespan to shape cognitive ageing. Rather than viewing ageing as a uniform process, my work aims to understand variability — why some people maintain cognitive function, while others face greater challenges — and what this means for promoting healthy or "successful" ageing in real-world contexts.

This site brings together my work, ideas, and ongoing projects. I can't promise everything on here will be coherent or useful,  but if something here resonates, I’d be very happy to connect.