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| Our major emphasis is on the study of attention, perception, and language. The research is conducted by studying patients with selective deficits following brain damage and using functional neuroimaging in normal subjects. The following are some of the questions being pursued: |
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| Lab Personnel |
Lab Director:
Anjan Chatterjee
My area of interest is in Cognitive Neuroscience and Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology. My research is directed at understanding the architecture and neural bases for human cognition. The structure of cognition is at present (and perhaps in principle) not reduced easily to cellular or molecular explanations. The study of how the brain mediates cognition, while constrained by micro-neural facts, is more directly investigated at higher levels of organization by studying cognition in humans. We use experimental and neuroimaging techniques in normal subjects and examine the neuro-psychological effects of brain damage. A clear understanding of cognitive systems and their breakdown is essential in educating patients and families and critical in designing rational treatment strategies. |
Patient Coordinator:
Marianna Stark
Research Interests: As the Patient Coordinator for the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN), I am responsible for recruiting and screening patients with focal brain injury to participate in our research program. The goal is to establish a large database of patients for researchers at the CCN who are interested in studying brain-behavior relationships. My personal research interests include multimodal spatial representations and visual attention. |
| Post-Doctoral Fellows: |
Alexander Kranjec, PhD Research Interests:I’m a cognitive psychologist interested in how people represent basic abstract domains like space and time. One of my goals as a researcher is to better |
Eileen Cardillo PhD Research Interests: Broadly speaking, I am interested in the neural adaptations that enabled the emergence of language in our species. My research has primarily considered the operation of domain general processes like selective attention and inhibitory |
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Gwen Schmidt Research Interests: Broadly construed, my research interests focus on neural models of language comprehension, particularly semantic processing. I became fascinated with the connection between the brain and linguistic behavior as an undergraduate studying linguistics, and pursued this interest as a graduate student in cognitive neuroscience. My primary research interests focus on the neural correlates of figurative language processing, the role of the right hemisphere in language processing, and the connection between right hemisphere language and other right hemisphere cognitive functions. I have a secondary interest in exploring these issues in autism. Some questions I am interested in include the following. What are the mechanisms underlying the right hemisphere involvement in processing broad semantic relationships? How does the type of metaphor (nominal, predicate, etc) affect processing? Are all types of metaphor equally "figurative"? How can we explain the literal bias in autism in terms of cognitive mechanisms which are different for people with autism? |
Graduate Students: |
Prin Amorapanth Research Interests: How do we structure the spatial relations around us? Are there universal cognitive processes that mediate between perception and language? The hypothesis that I am working with is that there are, and that these mediating processes called schemas, share properties of both spatial and linguistic representations. I will be testing this hypothesis with the closed class grammatical structures of our language (in particular spatial prepositions like above, across, in, on, etc.). I also plan to find out why I am so fascinated with bright shiny objects. |
Elaine Wencil
Research Interests: A common thread running through my research interests is how the interplay between lower-level perceptual processing and higher-level cognitive functioning result in how we perceive and act in the world. Currently, I am utilizing cognitive neuroscience techniques such as functional imaging to explore temporal processing. |
| Undergraduate Students: |
Rebecca Sternschein E-mail: resterns@sas.upenn.edu Research Interests: |
Billy Smith E-mail: WBSmithII@aol.com Research Interests: I am currently an undergraduate in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. I am a member of the University Scholars program for research and have declared a major in "Biological Basis of Behavior." I'm currently conducting research into the changes in subjects' artwork after brain damage. |
| Staff: |
Page Widick
Department of Neurology E-mail: widickp@uphs.upenn.edu Research Interests: I received a B.A. in Psychology from Haverford College in 2004. I am currently conducting cognitive neuroscience research working on studies of language and spatial relationships. |
| Lab Cat: |
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Research Interests: My research focuses on the neurological basis for hiding under couches, eating copiously, and napping on a variety of surfaces. I'm an excellent researcher. |
| Lab Alumni: |
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Sashank Prasad
Sashank is currently a resident at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. |
| Denise Wu Denise has returned to Taiwan to join the faculty of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at National Central University. |
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Sara Waller Sara returned to her faculty position in Philosophy at Case Western Reserve University |
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Iftah Biran
Iftah has joined the neurology faculty at the Haddassah Hospital in Jerusalem, Israel. |
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Janice Snyder
Jan is now on faculty at the Univesity of the Cariboo, in Kamloops, Canada. |
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Roberta Daini
Roberta returned to her faculty position in Psychology at the University of Milan -Bicocca. |
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Raffaella Ricci
Raffaella Ricci is on the faculty of the Psychology Department at the Universita degli Studi di Torino. |
| Joe Kable After receiving his doctorate, Joe accepted a post-doctoral position at New York University and is now working in Dr. Paul Glimcher's lab. |
| Sandeep Vaishnavi After receiving his doctorate in the lab, Sandeep Vaishnavi continued his clinical medical education before going on to a psychiatry residency at Duke University. |
| Adam Greenberg After working in the lab and completing his degree in bio-engineering at UAB, Adam took a position at the NIH in Dr. Leslie Ungerleider's lab. |
| Ashley Wilson Ashley is now doing neurology research on the west coast at University of California, San Francisco. |
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Jesse Calhoun
After completing an undergraduate honors thesis, Jesse worked as an RA in the lab. Following that, he pursued further education in philosophy. |
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Jonathan Kopelovich
After completing his undergraduate honor thesis in the lab, Jonathan traveled to locations near and far before applying to medical school. |
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Elizabeth Olsen
After completing her honors thesis, Liz took a job in Boston in a project examining neuropsychological aspects of schizophrenia. |
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Adrianna Kashuba
Adrianna completed her degree in the History of Art and is currently lost in Chicago continuing her education. |
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Carla Goncalves
Carla decided to work in industry before deciding whether to continue with post-graduate training in psychology or in medicine. |
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Kate Lauber
Kate also decided to work in industry before deciding whether to continue with post-graduate training in psychology or in medicine. |
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Feyza Sancar
Feyza left to be a neuroscience graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. |
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Kenneth Thompson
After leaving the lab, Kenneth Thompson enrolled as a medical student at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. |
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Angela Armstrong
Angela used her engineering background to get a job in industry. |