Nobre grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and was educated at the Escola Americana do Rio de Janeiro (EARJ). She moved to the United States to complete her higher education. She obtained her BA from Williams College in 1985, with a Contract Major in the area of neuroscience; and obtained her MPhil, MS, and PhD (1992) from Yale University for research on intracranial and non-invasive electrophysiological studies of language and attention in the human brain.