Sophie Scott is a Wellcome Trust senior fellow, and deputy director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University College London. She researches how the human brain processes sound, and how this relates to communication and the human voice. She is particularly interested in applying models and theories of non-human primary brain organization to the study of how humans engage with sound, and in exploring the varieties of processes that underlie perception and production of sound. She has worked with speech, music and emotional sounds, and has studied actors, impressionists and beatboxers. She has recently been addressing laughter, and has published an opinion paper on the social use of laughter in Trends in Cognitive Sciences. She is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and has published over 100 peer reviewed scientific papers.