Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Research Groups

Dr. Brielmaier Sontag's Lab

Dr. Brielmaier Sontag is able to serve as an MA thesis or dissertation committee member for CBN students whose research has a behavioral neuroscience focus. She is also involved with research on online teaching and learning. Current studies are investigating the role of course design in student motivation and performance, and student engagement in an online vs. face-to-face physiological psychology course.

Dr. Davis's Lab

Dr. Doris Bitler Davis works with undergraduate and graduate students on issues related to animal learning and cognition. One area of focus involves understanding animal communication systems and their evolutionary relationship to human language. Subjects include domesticated species such as goats (Capra hircus), chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus), and dogs (Canis lupus familiaris). A related interest is in more clearly identifying, describing, and mitigating cognitive dysfunction syndrome in companion animals. Other lines of research include: 1) the pedagogy of psychology (the empirical evaluation of methods for improving student learning and retention), 2) food choices and eating behavior in humans and animals, and 3) anomalistic psychology (the study of extraordinary beliefs, behaviors, and experiences).

Dr. Dumas' Lab

The Physiological and Behavioral Neuroscience in Juveniles (PBNJ) laboratory, directed by Dr. Dumas, has a primary interest in relating postnatal changes in brain function with the emergence of various cognitive skills. Our approach is highly interdisciplinary utilizing tools at the molecular, cellular, physiological and behavioral levels. We are also interested in generating new neuroscience tools to better probe brain function and, along this line, have created designer transgenic mice and optical voltage sensors. Our research has built a basic science knowledge base to better understanding normal and pathological brain maturation and to provide novel targets for therapy.

Dr. McDonald's Lab

I am investigating the neurocognitive basis of perceptual decision-making. More specifically, I am interested in examining the interplay between selective attention and performance monitoring (the cognitive process that allows us to evaluate our performance on a task). I am investigating how these cognitive processes enable perceptual decision-making when sensory inputs are ambiguous, as is often the case in the real world. My research takes advantage of electroencephalography, event-related potentials (ERPs), and brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to characterize the neural underpinnings of these cognitive processes.

Dr. Thompson's Lab

My work examines two vital components of human cognition: social perception; and how we understand our physical world through the representation of time and space – roughly categorized, people and time/space. My goal is to uncover the neural mechanisms that underlie our understanding of our social and physical worlds using the tools of social and cognitive neuroscience, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), source-localized electroencephalography (EEG), and more recently, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS).

Dr. Wiener's Lab

How does the brain perceive time and space?  Philosophers may debate the nature of each, but my lab aims to empirically study how the brain constructs these dimensions.  To do this, my lab uses a variety of different tools in the armamentarium of Cognitive Neuroscience: functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), Electroencephalography (EEG), and Psychophysics.  Additionally, my lab focuses on combining different techniques, such as simultaneous TMS-EEG or fMRI-EEG, to enhance their power and the repertoire of questions that can be asked.

Specifically, we are interested in how our sensory systems construct a unified perception of time and space, such that our world perceptually appears to seamlessly "flow" from one moment to the next.  A particular emphasis in my research is on the perception of rhythm and music, as well as spatial navigation.  For the former, we are interested in whether the brain is guided by an internal rhythm or "beat" which paces our perceptions and actions.  For the latter, we are interested in how our expectations modify our interactions with the environment.  Our work investigates both healthy human subjects and those suffering from different pathologies, including traumatic brain injury (TBI), stroke, and disorders (Schizophrenia, Parkinson's Disease).