| Principal Investigators |
Brett
Clementz, PhD.
Psychology Department Webpage |
 |
Jennifer
McDowell, PhD.
Psychology Department Webpage |
|
Kara Dyckman, PhD [CV]
Email: kdyckman@uga.edu
I rejoined the Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience Lab as a faculty member in Fall 2010. Previously, I had been a graduate student working with Drs. McDowell and Clementz. I spent 3 years in Boston doing a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Dara Manoach at the Martinos Center affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital. My research has involved investigating changes in brain activation following practice of a task. I am interested in how brain function changes as we get better at something and are able to perform it faster and/or more accurately. I have used both fMRI and EEG to look at these changes in young adults. I have also been involved in a number of projects investigating cognitive function in schizophrenia both at UGA and MGH. We are currently interested in whether patients with schizophrenia can improve on cognitive tasks similar to healthy young adults and how changes in brain function support this.
|
| CCNL Graduate Students |
|
Lingxi Chi
B.S. Liaoning Normal University, China (2009)
Email: cynthia.lingxi@gmail.com
I'm interested in using neuroimaging techniques to understand cognitive control and executive function. I'm currently working on a behavioral study of multiple tasks investigating normal undergraduate students’ inhibition function. I'm also involved in a fMRI study of neural plasticity in schizophrenia people. I'm also interested in analyzing and comparing different experimental designs used fMRI studies |
|
Lauren Ethridge
B.A. University of Georgia (2006)
B.S. University of Georgia (2006)
Email: ethri@uga.edu
I am currently working on several projects involving the use of EEG and MEG and the visual steady state to examine the neural correlates of antisaccade performance measures, including the spatial transformation process and attentional modulation during pro- and antisaccades in people with high versus low operation span scores, people with schizophrenia, and their clinically normal first degree relatives. I recently completed a project studying methods by which to best measure ERP correlates of the visual target identification in a rotated head paradigm with monozygotic and dizygotic twins for use in endophenotype research. In the future, I am interested in continuing research with multi-modal neuroimaging in twins and clinical populations to further evaluate how genetics interplays with environment to shape behavior. |
|
Jordan Hamm [CV]
B.S./B.A. The University of Georgia, (2008)
M.S. The University of Georgia, (2010)
Email: jordanh@uga.edu
My research concerns the spatio/temporal network structure and function of intrinsic rhythms of the brain. Specifically, I use electro-magnetic source imaging (MEG, EEG, MRI) to detect, characterize, and map oscillatory neural activity across a wide bandwidth (.5-200Hz) as it propagates and synchronizes across cerebral cortical neural populations. My current projects seek an understanding of how these basic neural mechanisms manifest in ocular-motor/inhibition tasks (pro/antisaccades), are altered in schizophrenia, and are inherited among neuropsychiatric families. |
|
Cynthia Krafft
B.S. University of South Carolina (2008)
Email: krafft@uga.edu
My main research focus is a collaborative project between researchers at UGA and MCG, where I am investigating the cognitive and neural changes associated with an exercise intervention program in overweight, sedentary elementary school aged children. I am also involved in a study that is investigating neural plasticity resulting from saccadic practice in schizophrenia. |
|
Justin Knight [CV]
M.S. University of Georgia, (2010)
B.S. North Greenville University, (2008)
Email: jbknight@uga.edu
I am interested in implementing neuroimaging techniques in order to inform cognitive theory. Specifically, my research interests center on the cognitive domain of memory, of which I am interested in exploring the degree to which neuronal processes that support different types of memory (e.g., prospective, recognition, and source memory) are similar and distinct. Additionally, the associative mechanisms that support the binding of various contextual features into a mnemonic representation are of interest to me. To this end, I am conducting a variety of neuroimaging and behavioral experiments that are aimed at examining the neural and cognitive processes involved in prospective memory, recognition memory, retrieval facilitated learning, and free recall. Lastly, I also investigate the interaction of these cognitive processes and transient mood states. |
|
Qinyang Li [CV]
M.S. Peking University (2005)
B.E. University of Science and Technology, Beijing (2002)
Email: yang@uga.edu
I am interested in attention and the relationship between attention and other
cognitive functions, such as perception, emotion and executive function. My most recent study
examined how the emotional vocal expressions attract listener's attention when the stimuli was
unattended and task irrelevant in an auditory oddball task (under review). Currently I am using
antisaccade task to investigate whether alcohol/drug abuse is related to the inhibition function
of healthy participants. |
|
William Oliver
B.S. University of Georgia (2008)
Email: woliver@uga.edu
Currently, I am working on several projects in the lab. The first is an EEG study focusing on neural entrainment to an oscillating visual stimulus in persons with schizophrenia. I am also involved in an MEG study focusing on persons with schizophrenia that involves an auditory oddball task. The third research project that I am involved in is an exploratory effort attempting to combine cross modal imaging data. This research involves a simple visual paradigm that is administered under three imaging environments EEG, MEG and fMRI. This project is still in a pilot phase and we are currently working through the complex confounding technical issues. My most recent endeavor will be focused on manipulating an individual’s attitude toward another’s race and behavioral/neural consequences of such attitudes. For instance, what effect does ignoring another’s race have on face processing of same and different race faces? |
|
Nicolette Schwarz
B.A. Northwestern University (2007)
I am interested in the function and structure of the brain. Using neuroimaging techniques, I hope to elucidate differences in function and structure of the brain of individuals with pathology compared to those without. My first project is a pilot study in cooperation with the MCG and will examine differences in executive functioning in obese/overweight children with or without ADHD. Furthermore, this study will examine the correlations between cognition, achievement, fitness, and fatness in children with and without ADHD. |
|
Matthew Hudgens-Haney [CV]
B.A. University of Alabama (2008)
M.A. Georgia State University (2010)
Email: mhaney@uga.edu
My primary research interest is cognitive neuroscience in atypical populations. My master's research focused on deficits in the development of "mindreading" in children with autism and the relation between this development to issues of embodiment. My current project is an MEG study examining control and decision making. Specifically, we are looking at differences in neural activation between pathological gamblers and non-pathological gamblers during the Georgia Gambling Task. My related interests include neuroplasticity, learning, and expertise, philosophy of psychology and mental disorder, looping effects of psychiatric classifications, the sociology of philosophy and psychology, and water sports. |
|
Jordan Pierce [CV]
B.S. University of North Carolina at Charlotte (2010)
Email: jepierce@uga.edu
I'm interested in using neuroimaging techniques like fMRI to investigate cognitive function, including executive control, attention, and plasticity, in normal and schizophrenic populations. |
|
David Schaeffer
B.S. Michigan Technological University (2010)
Email: djschaef@uga.edu
My research focuses on connectivity of neural fiber tracts in the brain. In collaboration with Georgia’s Health Sciences University, I use diffusion weighted imaging to study how neural fiber tracts are affected by exercise in overweight school children. To study how exercise induced changes in neural fiber tracts are related to brain function, I use multimodal techniques combining functional MRI and diffusion imaging to study cognitive control processes such as inhibition and their neural substrates. |
|
Amanda Rodrigue [CV]
B.A. Loyola University New Orleans (2007)
M.S. University of Louisiana at Lafayette (2009)
Email: alrodrig11@gmail.com
I am interested in the neurological basis of cognitive deficits in schizophreina, particularly deficits in cognitive control and cognitive inhibition. I am also especially interested in the role of the ACC and Prefrontal cortex in problems with cognitive control in schizophrenia. Currently, I am looking at the difference in performance between schizophrenics and normal controls across different context dependent saccade paradigms. |
|
Anastasia Bobilev
Email: ambobilev@gmail.com
|
