We all know that common daily experiences – good or bad – and our emotional reactions to them can slide under our conscious radar and are easily dismissed. But do their effects disappear? When they keep repeating, what is the long-term impact on us and on our families? Everyday events and emotions shape the very…
We cannot process or remember everything we encounter. How, then, do we acquire and hold onto memories that matter? My work seeks to understand the brain mechanisms that facilitate attention and memory for highly emotional and salient events. In my cognitive neuroscience lab, we examine how emotional and everyday arousal influence the selectivity (what we…
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is estimated to affect almost 4% of the world’s population. However, most people are unable to access treatment. The TRUST lab develops PTSD treatments that address barriers to care and are contextually and culturally appropriate for diverse communities. The TRUST lab has a specific focus on multiply marginalized communities who are…
We often think of our mind and body as separate entities, one non-physical and the other physical. But how separable are they really? The Brain and Body Lab aims to find out. The mind does not exist in a vacuum; it lives in context and it develops in context too. For babies and young people,…
We study the neural pathways that contribute to forming different types of memories. We use modern neuroscience tools that allow us to record and manipulate specific neuronal populations in the awake, freely moving (and learning!) rodent during formation and recollection of new memories. The complexity of our modern environment means that we need to form…
Dr. Paquette-Smith conducts research in two distinct areas of cognitive science. Her basic research program (described here) seeks to understand how children and adults perceive and produce speech. Her applied research examines how teachers can optimize student learning in the classroom. No matter where we grew up or what languages we speak, we all have…
Dr. Sumner’s research examines how the experiences of trauma and severe stress contribute to accelerated aging and risk for chronic disease. The vast majority of individuals will be exposed to at least one traumatic event during their lifetime, and growing evidence suggests that these experiences can have lasting impacts on both mental and physical health….
Language is our main tool for transferring thoughts from one mind to another. The BlankLangLab studies the mental processes that make language comprehension possible, and the relationship between these linguistic mechanisms and the rest of the human mind. Language is unique to humans: whereas other animals can communicate, their communication channels do not possess the same complex structures, systematic operations, or expressive…
Culture and human development is my passion. My contributions have included comparative studies across species, ages, cultures, and historical time. Most exciting now: a study of over a half billion social media posts shows a cultural shift during COVID-19 towards concerns, behaviors, and values adaptive in the subsistence ecologies of human evolution. This new online…
Dr. Wassum’s research is focused on understanding the neural correlates underlying motivation and decision making and how this information can be harnessed to understand and treat mental illness and substance use disorder. To make good decisions we have to get into the time machine that is our brain and cast ourselves into the future to…