Stories of Women in Neuroscience · Stories of WiN

Dr. Sahba Besharati

·55 min·4 clips

The secret to business: discover today what will matter in three, five, and seven years

Stories of Win opens with Margarita framing the show as a place to feature women in neuroscience. She welcomes Dr. Sarba Desharati, who asks to be called Sarba, and introduces her as a clinical neuropsychologist and associate researcher at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. The episode focuses on the Desharati Lab’s interest in self-consciousness, emotion, and social cognition. Sarba starts with an origin story that reaches back to first-year university. She says high school did not suit her. History and literature were the subjects that felt natural to her first, and psychology came alongside them. One of her early undergraduate lectures in neuropsychology made the difference. She describes Mark Solms as a renowned South African neuroscientist whose teaching style stood out because he did not use slides. That lecture pulled her attention toward the brain. From there, the conversation moves chronologically, with Sarba retracing how her interests changed over time. She talks about early exposure to neuropsychology and how that led into later research choices. The discussion turns to the question of self-consciousness. Sarba explains that early development is a critical period for the brain, which is highly plastic and still forming a first sense of consciousness and self. She links that developmental mystery to her own research interests. Her PhD work looked at the opposite problem, asking how a sense of self can be lost. That question was explored through focal brain injury. Margarita follows up by connecting the research to dementias and progressive brain injury, and Sarba treats that as part of the same underlying puzzle. The episode then shifts into the practical side of her career. Sarba describes training in neuroimaging sciences during a time when the field was still in its infancy in South Africa, especially in Cape Town. She and her family later moved back to South Africa after a period in London. Johannesburg initially felt like a hard place to restart, because the research landscape was thin and the available opportunities seemed limited. She says many people questioned why she came back. That frustration is part of the story, and the episode handles it plainly. Eventually she found a postdoctoral home at the Center of Human Development at WITS. There she worked with Linda Richtner, whom she describes as a strong female scientist with a psychology background and a focus on longitudinal cohort research. The project was not exactly the one she had imagined. Still, she points out that researchers often have to work with the resources in front of them. That practical flexibility becomes one of the quieter threads in the episode. The conversation also shows how her clinical experience continued alongside her academic work. Margarita keeps bringing the thread back to how the science and the life story inform each other. Near the end, the mood softens into a more personal note. Sarba talks about hiking and trekking as the kind of discovery excursion she enjoys. She likes the feeling of being away from everything, and she especially likes a hike that ends at a beach where she can swim. The closing exchange is warm and appreciative, with Margarita thanking Sarba for her time, her perspective, and the example she offers as a researcher and person in science.

As heard by us

A thoughtful career story about how selfhood, injury, and research questions meet.

Dr. Sarba Desharati's conversation follows an academic path from an undergraduate spark in neuropsychology into work on self-consciousness, emotion, and social cognition.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a grounded career story about self-consciousness, focal brain injury, and the long route into neuropsychology.

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