Center for Cognitive Neuroscience Department of Psychology University of Pennsylvania Mailing address: 3720 Walnut Street, Solomon Lab Room B51 Philadelphia, PA 19104-6241 Office address: 3810 Walnut St., Room 307 Philadelphia, PA 19104 215.573.6726 (phone) 215.898.1982 (fax) E-mail: evangelg@psych.upenn.edu
Evangelia G. Chrysikou, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Research Fellow Sharon Thompson-Schill Lab Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology University of Pennsylvaniahttp://www.psych.upenn.edu/stslab/http://ccn.upenn.edu/http://www.psych.upenn.edu/http://www.upenn.edu/shapeimage_4_link_0shapeimage_4_link_1shapeimage_4_link_2shapeimage_4_link_3
How do people use objects to achieve goals and solve problems? My research interests are at the intersection of three areas within cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, namely language, memory, and action/perception. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. I have received my Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Temple University in 2005 and remained at Temple for a yearlong postdoctoral appointment in clinical neuropsychology. The focus of my research program is to examine the development of flexibility in cognitive control of semantic knowledge retrieval for goal-oriented behavior, with an emphasis on human problem solving and everyday tool use. I examine the neurocognitive processes that allow us to move beyond what we know about or how we usually interact with an object to come up with a novel or unusual use for it, when the situation imposes such demands (e.g., use a knife to cut food or as a screwdriver). To address these questions, I am collecting a combination of behavioral, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) data from healthy adults or neuropsychological populations. The aim of these studies is to identify the factors implicated in our unique ability to re-conceptualize a tool and extend its use or to create a new artifact with which to achieve a goal or solve a problem. I am further exploring the educational applications of cognitive training paradigms for the development of higher-order thinking in children and young adults, as well as the translational implications of cognitive flexibility for the characterization of deficient cognitive/executive profiles in depression and other psychiatric disorders marked by prefrontal cortex hypofunction.