Cognitive Program Postdoctoral Students and Research Associates

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Jessica Andrews-Hanna

Research Interests: : I am interested in using fMRI to investigate the neural underpinnings of introspective thought (i.e. autobiographical memory, future thinking, self-referential/affective processing, social cognitive inference) and the mechanisms by which such processes are regulated by top-down control. By characterizing these mechanisms in healthy young adults, I hope to examine how they change across the lifespan as well as in clinical populations.

Carolyn Buck-Gengler

Research Interests: My research interests fall in the area of psycholinguistics and computational linguistics. I am especially interested in experimental psycholinguistics, reading, lexical access, and language acquisition.

Nicolas Chevalier

  • Advisor/PI: Yuko Munakata
  • Education: PhD, University of Provence, France (Psychology)
  • nicolas.chevalier@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: I am interested in the development of executive functions in children. More specifically, I investigate how children process environmental information to determine the goals that they need to achieve. I study the cognitive processes that support goal representation in the context of set-shifting and response inhibition, using behavioral, eye-tracking, and electrophysiological techniques.

Brendan Depue

Research Interests: I am a cognitive neuroscientist interested, generally, in how humans modify their behavior. Volitionally modifying behavior is thought to be initiated by cognitive control or executive function processes. Cognitive control/executive function is thought to be instituted by influence of prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions interacting on posterior cortical and sub-cortical regions. To understand such processes, I use methods such as fMRI and ERP.

Detre Godinez

  • Advisor/PI: Marie Banich
  • Education: PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder
  • detre.godinez@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: My research utilizes behavioral genetic and neuroimaging designs toward understanding the biological systems underlying the development of executive function and regulatory abilities. In particular, I am interested in the effect of stress, both acute and chronic, on executive function and emotional regulation.

Tom Hazy

Research Interests: Coming soon

Seth Herd

Research Interests: What is human nature? How can a thinking, feeling, deciding and conscious mind emerge from dumb matter? How can we improve our lives? These sound like philosophical questions, and yet science is now able to address them. I teach and write to clarify what's important in current cognitive science. These issues are informed by my research with artificial neural networks and theories on vision, executive function, and how the brain learns in and over time.

Grit Herzmann

Research Interests: I use behavioral and neuroscience methods to investigate the neural processes that underlie differences in human memory and face recognition. Currently, I am pursuing two research projects. The first investigates the influence of perceptual expertise on memory encoding and recognition. The second examines the role of memory for own-race and other-race face processing.

Tsung-Ren "Tren" Huang

Research Interests: My main research interests are human and machine learning of perceptual/cognitive skills. I use computational modeling and psychophysics to address research issues such as neural mechanisms of visual scene understanding, attentional effects in perceptual learning, and cognitive flexibility in rule learning.

James A. Kole

Research Interests: My research focuses on training and transfer of low- and high-level cognitive skills, mechanisms underlying and the generality of inhibitory processes, and memory augmentation. Currently, I am conducting studies examining inhibition in a simple motor task, long-term retention and mediation, and a two-factor theory of the retrieval-induced forgetting effect.

Trenton Kriete

  • Advisor/PI: Randall O'Reilly
  • Education: PhD, University of California, Merced (Cognitive Science)
  • trenton.kriete@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: I investigate the mechanisms that underlie basic human cognitive functions, in both normally developing and clinical populations, utilizing computational models of brain function. Currently, I am researching how our brains leverage the information and advantages of embodiment when solving everyday tasks.

Kai Arne Kruger

Research Interests: My main research interests lie in modelling of prefrontal cortex and executive control. In particular, I'm interested in the amazing flexibility of human control and its ability to rapidly adapt to novel tasks, either through efficient trial and error learning or through the help of instruction. I am interested in identifying some of the computational principals and requirements that allows the brain to achieve this flexibility and see if these can be modeled in neural networks or if they can be applied to artificial learning agents.

Joseph Orr

Research Interests: I am interested in understanding the neural mechanisms underlying task selection in multitasking environments. While we may think we have control over which task we choose at any given moment, there are a number of factors that influence our choices. I am particularly interested in how goal-directed processes and stimulus-driven processes interact to guide our choices. I will be using fMRI and ERP to examine the interplay of these processes in the brain.

Wolfgang M. Pauli

Research Interests: My research projects focus on the interaction between motivation and cognition. In particular, we are interested in mechanisms of hierarchical decision-making. We combine behavioral neuroscience with computational neuroscience to develop a better understanding of the interactions between frontal cortical and subcortical brain areas.

William Raymond

  • Advisor/PI: Alice Healy
  • Education: PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder (Linguistics and Cognitive Science
  • william.raymond@colorado.edu
  • Web: http://psych.colorado.edu/~raymondw

Research Interests: My research is interdisciplinary, involving statistical, computational, distributional, and experimental methodologies and involving data from corpora, laboratory tasks, typological surveys, and speech errors. I am currently the Assistant to the Director for the Center for Research on Training at CU, funded by a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant to investigate training of knowledge and skill.

Vicki Schneider

Research Interests: My current research is in skill acquisition, retention and transfer. More specifically, we are conducting research based on communication of between air traffic controllers and pilots. My previous work has included the study of reading, memory, and second language acquisition.

Melanie Stollstorff

  • Advisor/PI: Yuko Munakata
  • Education: PhD, Georgetown University (Cognitive Neuroscience)
  • melanie.stollstorff@colorado.edu
  • Web:

Research Interests: I want to understand how/why individuals differ in higher order cognitive function and emotional regulation. For example, how do genes that influence neurotransmitter function (e.g., DAT1, 5-HTTLPR, BDNF) relate to differences in functional brain activation (e.g., in PFC, hippocampus) and cognition/behavior (e.g., reasoning bias, emotional reactivity)? Using the combination of behavioral, fMRI, genetic and pharmacological techniques, I study both healthy adults and children and those with neuropsychological disorders. I hope this research will advance our understanding of both cognitive and emotional aspects of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), depression and anxiety disorders.

Sergio Verduzco-Flores

Research Interests: Dynamics of biologically-plausible neural networks, embodied cognition, neural oscillations, working memory, and anything that promises to explain the workings of the brain at some level.

Tal Yarkoni

  • Advisor/PI: Tor Wager
  • Education: PhD, Washington University in St. Louis
  • tal.yarkoni@colorado.edu
  • Web: http:/talyarkoni.org

Research Interests: My research interests include fMRI methods, personality measurement, and emotion-cognition interaction.

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