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Sharon L. Thompson Schill
Davidson College; B.A. in Psychology
Stanford University; Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology
Research Interests: I am interested in the neural bases of memory and language in humans.
Research in Progress: Research in my lab focuses on the investigation of semantic memory, in particular, we are concentrating on the role of the frontal lobes in the semantic retrieval of information.
Email: sschill@psych.upenn.edu
Nazbanou Nozari
Tehran University of Medical Sciences; M.D., 2005
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Ph.D. Cognitive Psychology, 2011
Research Interests: I study people's ability to process language efficiently, with a strong emphasis on how cognitive control influences verbal communication or tasks requiring verbal processing. Producing fluent meaningful language is heavily dependent on executive abilities, and I use various methods, such as behavioral experimentation, computational modeling, Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), Voxel-based Lesion-Symptom Mapping (VLSM), and rececently, eye-tracking to learn the exact nature of these dependencies. I use three populations: healthy younger adults, older adults (to understand the cognitive changes during normal aging), and post-stroke brain-damaged patients (to understand the consequences of damage to the cognitive system). In the future, I hope to use the fruit of this research for developing beter methods of learning in neurologically-healthy individuals, as well as re-learning the lost information in brain-damaed patients.
Email: nozari@sas.upenn.edu
Matt Weber
Amherst College; B.A. Computer Science, B.A. Russian, 2002
Princeton University; Ph.D. Psychology & Neuroscience, 2009
Research Interests:I'm interested in the influence of frontal activity on statistical learning in children and adults. In a past life, I was interested in recovering the structure of natural concepts from brain activity.
Research in Progress: I'm using behavioral testing, connectionist simulations, and transcranial direct current stimulation to examine, respectively, how measures of frontal function and statistical learning are related across the lifespan, what computational factors
might underlie that relationship, and whether it can be modulated in adults by changing the excitability of frontal cortex.
Email: mweb@sas.upenn.edu
Yune-Sang Lee
Yonsei University; B.S. Biology, 2001
Darmouth College; Ph.D. Cognitive Neuroscience, 2010
Research Interests: I am interested in exploring the neural route/basis of percept-to-concept. More specifically, my research has been focused on how the brain integrates modality-specific percepts into the internal brain language of modality-independent concepts. To address the question, I mainly use functional neuroimaging combined with machine-learning techniques. Besides, I'm interested in the 'cousin' of language, that is, music processing in the brain and the evolution of music and language of humans.
Email: yslee@sas.upenn.edu | Website »
Jorge Valdes Kroff
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; B.A. Linguistics, 2001
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; B.A. International Studies, 2001
Pennsylvania State University; Ph.D. Spanish and Language Science, 2012
Research Interests: My research focuses on the comprehension of codeswitching -- the fluid alternation of languages in bilingual speech -- and how exposure to codeswitching may more generally affect cognitive control processes involved in the mediation of conflicting representations.
Christine Boylan
University of Chicago; B.A. in Biology (Neuroscience), B.A. in Linguistics, 2008
Research Interests: Neural bases of language, syntax/semantics interface, degree of domain specificity/generality of brain regions implicated in language processing.
Research in Progress: I am currently working on a study of syntactic and semantic prediction effects on word form estimation using fMRI and multivoxel pattern analysis.
Email: chboylan@sas.upenn.edu
Marc Coutanche
Oxford University; B.A. in Experimental Psychology, 2005
Research Interests: My interests include the neural basis of semantic memory and the application of fMRI analysis techniques, such as multivariate pattern analysis.
Research in Progress: I am currently using fMRI pattern analysis techniques to examine the neural representations of objects and faces.
Email: coumarc@psych.upenn.edu | Website »
Lisa Musz
Carleton College; B.A. in Psychology, 2010
Research Interests: I am interested in using neuroimaging techniques to explore the neural correlates of both semantic and working memory processes. In particular, I want to study flexible and creative thought, as well as the role of the prefrontal cortex in learning and goal-oriented behavior.
Research in Progress: I am currently researching the effects of hypofrontality on visual statistical learning using transcranial direct current simulation. Additionally, I am using fMRI adaptation techniques to inform distributed models of semantic memory for object representations.
Email: muszeliz@sas.upenn.edu
Andrew Persichetti
Portland State University; B.A. in Philosophy & Psychology, 2010
Research Interests: I am interested in object representations and neural tuning in visual cortex. I am especially interested in how visual perception both affects and is affected by higher cognitive processes.
Research in Progress: My current work is studying how extra-visual information might modulate object representations in the brain. Using fMRI adaptation, MVPA, and behavioral measures, the experiment also asks whether populations of neurons in early visual areas are conjointly tuned for both color and shape, and to what extent the neural response in the visual system affects decision making.
Email: apersi@sas.upenn.edu
Sarah Solomon
University of Delaware; M.A. in Cognitive Science, 2012
University of Delaware; B.S. in Psychology and Cognitive Science, 2011
University of Delaware; B.A. in Philosophy, 2011
Research Interests: I am interested in how concepts are formed, maintained, and represented in the brain.
Research in Progress: I am currently looking at how the brain deals with different representations of an object as that object changes over time. Using fMRI, I will look at both how these distinct object states affect representations in the visual cortex, and the role of the prefrontal cortex in managing these representations.
Email: sarahsol@sas.upenn.edu
