Sharon Thompson-Schill | University of Pennsylvania Department of Psychology

Class of 1965 Term Professor; Director of Undergraduate Studies; Director of the Undergraduate Honors Program; Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience

Department:

Psychology

Education:

BA, Psychology, Davidson College; Ph.D. Cognitive Psychology, Stanford University

Address:

Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Goddard Labs, 3710 Hamilton Walk, Room 507

Phone:

215-573-3533; 215-898-5663

Email:

sschill@psych.upenn.edu; dus@psych.upenn.edu

Personal Page

Lab Page

Research Themes:

Behavioral Neuroscience

Cognitive Neuroscience

Language and Communication

Memory and Learning

Sensation and Perception

Specific Research Areas:

Neural basis of human memory and language with an emphasis on semantic memory and frontal lobe function

Research Synopsis:

We study the biological bases of human cognitive systems – perception, memory, language, thought, cognitive control – and the interrelations among these systems, with a particular emphasis on the characterization of typical and atypical variation across individuals.

Recent projects emphasize (1) functions of the frontal lobe in the regulation of thought and behavior, especially in relation to language and memory processes; and (2) the organization and neural substrates of concept knowledge (especially knowledge of visual attributes) and the relation between conceptual information and perception and language.

We answer these questions by developing and implementing a wide array of behavioral and neuroscientific methods with both typical and atypical populations, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), lesion-deficit mapping of neurological patients, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), genotypic analysis of typical variation, on-line eye-tracking, & so on.

Dr. Thompson-Schill will be accepting graduate students for admission in fall 2012.

Representative Courses:

PSYC 149 Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience
PSYC 200 Undergraduate Honors Seminar
PSYC 630 Cognitive Neuroscience of Memeory

Appointments:

Psychology Graduate Group; Neuroscience Graduate Group

Advisees:

Christine Boylan [Psychology Graduate Student]
Marc Coutanche [Psychology Graduate Student]]
Nicholas Hindy [Psychology Graduate Student]
Nina Hsu [Neuroscience Graduate Student]
David Kraemer [Post-doc]
Jared Minkel [Post-doc]
Nazbanou Nozari [Post-doc]
Matt Weber [Post-doc]

Representative Publications:

Connolly, A.C., Gleitman, L.R., Thompson-Schill, S.L. (2007). A colorless cornucopia: How congenital blindness affects knowledge of everyday concepts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 104, 8241-8246.

Novick, J.M., Thompson-Schill, S.L. & Trueswell, J.C. (2008). Putting lexical constraints in context into the visual world paradigm. Cognition, 107-850-903.

Goldberg, R.F. & Thompson-Schill, S.L. (2009). Developmental 'roots" in mature biological knowledge. Psychological Science. 20(4):480-87.

January, D., Trueswell, J.C., & Thompson-Schill, S.L. (2009). Co-localization of Stroop and syntactic ambiguity resolution in Broca's area: Implications for the neural basis of sentence processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 21(12):2434-2444.

Yee, E., Overton, E., & Thompson-Schill, S.L. (in press). Looking for meaning: Eye movements are sensitive to overlapping semantic features, not association. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

Weber, M., Thompson-Schill, S.L. Osherson, D., Haxby, J., & Parsons, J. (2009). Predicting judged similarity of natural categories from their neural similarity. Neuropsychologica. 47(3):859-868

Kraemer, D., Rosenberg, L, & Thompson-Schill, S.L. (2009). The neural correlates of visual and verbal cognitive styles. Journal of Neuroscience. 29(12):3792-98.

Thompson-Schill, S.L., Chrysikou, E.G., & Ramscar, M. (2009). Cognition without control: When a little frontal cortex goes a long way. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 259-263.

Lupyan, G., Thompson-Schill, S.L., & Swingley, D. (in press). Conceptual penetration of visual processing. Psychological Science.

Hindy, N.C., Hamilton, R., Houghtling, A.S., Coslett, H.B., & Thompson-Schill, S.L. (in press). COmputer-mouse tracking reveals TMS disruptions of prefrontal function during semantic retrieval. Journal of Neurophysiology.

Schnur, T.T., Schwartz, M.F., Kimberg, D.Y., Hirshorn, E., Coslett, H.B., & Thompson-Schill, S.L. (2009). Localizing interference during naming: Convergent neuroimaging and neuropsychological evidence for the function of Broca's area. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 94, 14792-14797.

Yee, E., Overton, E., & Thompson-Schill, S. L. (2009). Looking for meaning: Eye movements are sensitive to overlapping semantic features, not association. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 869-974.

Hindy, N. C., Hamilton, R., Houghtling, A. S., Coslett, H. B., & Thompson-Schill, S. L. (2009). Computer-mouse tracking reveals TMS disruptions of prefrontal function during semantic retrieval. Journal of Neurophysiology, 102, 3405-3413.

Lupyan, G., Thompson-Schill, S. L., & Swingley, D. (2010). Conceptual penetration of visual processing. Psychological Science, 21, 682-691.

Chrysikou, E. G. & Thompson-Schill, S. L. (2011). Dissociable brain states linked to common and creative object use. Human Brain Mapping, 32, 665-675.