Dr. Jasmine Abrams, Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, presented her research on the Strong Black Woman Schema and its connection to depressive symptoms to students and faculty of the UGA Clinical Psychology program. We were so happy to have Dr. Abrams speak about her research and welcome her to campus!

Dr. Markus Junghöfer, senior scientist visiting from the University of Münster's Institute of Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis will be discussing his work on "Emotional Processing in Major Depression: vmPFC as a New Target for Transcranial Stimulation"

Congratulations to this cohort of second-year BBS students who presented talks on their first-year research projects! The talks were wide-ranging on subject matter, and excellently executed. 

(Top row L-R: Andrew Farkas, Rowena Xia, Rebekah Trotti, Will Schiavone; Bottom row L-R: Jaeseon Song, Kelsey Corallo, Libby Thomas, Sarah Lyle).

"Pioneer Visual Neuroscience: A Festschrift for Naomi Weisstein" was published this month and edited by faculty member Dr. James M. Brown, Dr. Weisstein's last graduate student at the University of Buffalo. This book honors Naomi Weisstein’s foreshortened span of work published from 1964 to 1992. Naomi Weisstein was a pioneer in the areas we now call visual neuroscience, visual cognition, and cognitive neuroscience. Her enthusiastic pursuit of the mind was infectious, inspiring many others to take up the challenge.

The UGA Psychology BBS program was well represented at the annual meeting of the "Society for Psychophysiological Research" in Quebec City, Canada (early October), as 4 students presented their research. Ask Elizabeth Edge, Andrew Farkas, Libby Thomas or Rebekah Trotti about their work next time you seen them! 

Congratulations to Dr. Katie Ehrlich and Dr. Greg Strauss who both received NARSAD Young Investigator Grants! The grants, awarded annually, support the work of early-career scientists with innovative ideas for groundbreaking neurobiological research seeking to identify causes, improve treatments and develop prevention strategies for psychiatric disorders.

The BBS Program offers a concentration in Developmental Science. This concentration is designed to train scientists to address questions of both basic and applied research from a developmental perspective, with enough flexibility in the program to allow for specialized research concentrations (in areas ranging from infant attention to health to vision science to neuroscience to family relationships). Faculty and students within the Developmental concentration often engage in interdisciplinary research. We are fortunate to have colleagues in other departments and research centers on campus who teach classes and offer collaborative research opportunities that may intersect with our students’ interests and training goals. Many of our Developmental students have taken courses or conducted research collaborations with faculty in the Departments of Educational Psychology, School Psychology, Kinesiology, Human Development and Family Science, Foods and Nutrition, or faculty affiliated with the Center for Family Research.

Core BBS Developmental Faculty

Dr. Katie Ehrlich studies how children’s social experiences shape their mental and physical health. Her laboratory utilizes a variety of research methods to evaluate social and emotional functioning, including structured behavioral observations, clinical interviews, self-reports, and performance-based tasks. In addition, she incorporates clinical health measures and indices of cellular function and adaptive immunity. Current projects examine (a) the links between social experiences and children’s antibody production following vaccination, (b) intergenerational transmission of health disparities among African American families, and (c) skin deep resilience, depression risk, and cognitive development in adolescence.

Laboratory: Health and Development Laboratory

 

Dr. Dorothy Fragaszy studies flexible instrumental behavior (problem-solving), perception, manipulation, and skill learning in primates. She considers the developmental bases of flexible behavior, and the contribution of social learning and social context to the expression of flexible behavior. She primarily studies capuchin monkeys (Sapajus and Cebus; South American monkeys) and adopts ecological and embodied perspectives to study behavior. Dr. Fragaszy collaborates with many colleagues studying wild tool-using capuchin monkeys in Brazil, and in laboratory studies of spatial cognition, perception and action.

Laboratory: Primate Cognition and Behavior Lab

 

Dr. Janet Frick studies individual and developmental differences in infant visual attention, with a primary focus on the cognitive and social influences of early attention, learning, and memory. She utilizes both laboratory and community-based observational studies of infant and toddler behavior. Some of her recent collaborative work has included examination of nutritional influences on the early development and function of the visual system, with a focus on how such individual differences impact early learning and memory.

Laboratory: Infant Research Laboratory

Dr. Anne Shaffer studies social and emotional processes in families and close relationships. She is currently studying how intensive parenting behaviors are linked to poorer mental health and systemic inflammation in parents.

Laboratory: FRESH (Family Relationships, Emotions, Stress and Health) Laboratory

 

Affiliated Developmental Faculty

Dr. Steven Beach is interested in the interconnected nature of problems in the family, problems with depression, and health-related outcomes. He also has focused on identifying ways to utilize social relationships as a method of enhancing health and well-being by constructing or enhancing resilience-promoting social resources (Brody, Yu, & Beach, 2016). His current work focuses on identifying biological markers, inflammatory processes, and epigenetic mediators of environmentally triggered effects on health and health behavior (Beach, Lei, Brody, Miller, Chen, Mandara, Philibert, 2017). This work contributes to the understanding of modifiable environmental factors that may indirectly drive biological and behavioral risk processes. Of particular interest are biological effects of family and social relationships.

Laboratory: Beach Laboratory

Dr. Ron Blount studies medical adherence, quality of life and adjustment to illness, medical outcomes, transition from pediatric to adult medical care, and related topics. His primary patient research groups include solid organ transplant recipients, patients with inflammatory bowel disease, cardiac conditions, and their families. Additionally, he has a variety of pediatric research interests and is currently or has recently conducted research on therapeutic camps and Tourette syndrome.

Laboratory: UGA Pediatric Psychology Lab

Dr. Justin Lavner is interested in interventions to promote physical, mental, and relational health among couples and families. He is currently conducting a randomized controlled trial testing two interventions for first-time African American mothers and their newborn infants aimed at reducing health disparities early in the lifespan.

Dr. Cindy Suveg is director of the Development and Psychopathology Lab, whose overarching goal is to examine contextual factors that facilitate and/or impede development in youth. Guided by the notion that development is best informed by studying pathways that lead to both adaptation and maladaptation, our research specifically investigates emotion regulation processes in typical and atypically developing child populations and incorporates a multi-reporter and multimethod assessment strategy (questionnaires, behavioral observations, electronic diaries, physiological assessment).

Lab: Development and Psychopathology Lab

Huge congratulations to faculty member, Dr. Katherine Ehrlich, on receiving a highly prestigious NIH High-Risk, High-Reward Grant! High-Risk High Reward Grant recipients are pursuing exceptionally high impact research studies aimed at addressing major gaps in biomedical research. Dr.

The Neuroscience group within the Behavior and Brain Sciences (BBS) area of the Psychology department includes a diversity of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the biological basis of mental phenomena and clinical disorders. Topics of research range from microscopic neurochemical processes to the functional organization of large scale cerebral systems. We have extensive expertise in the fields of Behavioral Neuroscience, Clinical Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience and Social / Affective Neuroscience.

Core BBS Neuroscience Faculty

Dr. James M. Brown’s research is aimed at trying to understand how we organize, perceive, and attend to our visual world. The general research approach could be described as a combination of cognitive psychophysics and visual neuroscience. Psychophysical methods are used to explore the relationship between the physical stimulus and what is perceived (i.e., cognitive psychophysics) while at the same time seeking to understand these perceptual experiences based on current knowledge about the neural machinery of the visual brain (i.e., visual neuroscience). An example of this approach includes recent studies of figure-ground perception from the perspective of activity within and between the dorsal and ventral visual streams. Other examples of topics of study include illusions, objects, and scenes. Recent collaborative research has expanded this approach to eye movement behavior.

Laboratory: Visual Perception Laboratory

Dr. Brett Clementz has two general goals. The first is to understand how accurate sensory processing is maintained within the context of changing environmental circumstances. The second is to understand neurobiological distinctions between different subgroups of brain diseases called the psychoses (defined clinically by the presence of hallucinations, delusions, and cognitive distrubance), which have demonstrated, for the majority of cases to have a substantial genetic diathesis. For Dr. Clementz, the first goal, which often involves the study of the healthy brain, informs the second goal of understanding deviations in brain functions associated with manifestation of psychosis in order to facilitate improved diagnosis and treatment of severe psychiatric disorders. The methodological core of Dr. Clementz’ research involves use of simple and complex behavioral paradigms combined with use of neuroimaging technologies including electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He uses sophisticated approaches to analyzing data collected with these technologies and is known for developing innovative analysis techniques. He and Dr. McDowell co-direct the Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory.

Laboratory: Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory

Dr. Dorothy Fragaszy is a primatologist and comparative psychologist. She studies flexible problem-solving behavior, particularly problems involving moving objects in space and time, using ecological, kinematic and experiential paradigms.  She is co-director of the EthoCebus field project, which concerns the behavior and ecology of bearded capuchin monkeys in the Cerrado environment of Brazil. The monkeys at the site crack nuts and other encased foods with stone hammers. Their behavior provides a phylogenetically distant reference point to compare with humans (current and ancestral) who use similar techniques to solve similar problems. She has spent the last fifteen years studying how these monkeys master using heavy stone hammers, and more generally, their behavioral ecology and development. Her expertise includes social learning and traditions in nonhuman animals, manual dexterity, and well-being of nonhuman primates in captivity.

Laboratory: Primate Cognition and Behavior Laboratory

Dr. Brian Haas is focused on understanding individual differences in social and affective functioning in humans by using a multi-modal approach. He is interested in understanding the pathways in the brain, social behavior and culture. In his laboratory, a multi-modal approach is used that includes genetics, brain-imaging, personality assessment, social-behavioral experiments and cultural assessments. The primary objective of this research is to better understand the factors contributing to, and associated with, individual differences in the way people think and process their social world.

Laboratory: Gene-Brain-Social Behavior Laboratory

Dr. Randy Hammond studies all aspects of the human visual system. This extends from basic studies of the cornea, lens and retina to applied studies of visual processing within the brain. A primary focus of his laboratory has been the investigation of how lifestyle, primarily dietary, influences both the development of degenerative disease and the normal function of the central nervous system. For example, psychophysical methods are used to measure the concentration of the dietary carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin within the fovea (termed macular pigment or the macula lutea) and have related those pigments to various aspects of retinal and brain function.

Laboratory: Vision Sciences Laboratory

Dr. Phil Holmes’ current research program focuses on the neurobiological effects of exercise. This research employs rodent models to study the relationship between exercise-induced regulation of neurotransmitter function and behavior. He is particularly interested in long-term changes in gene expression in the brain caused by exercise. Recent work has focused on the neurochemical basis for the antidepressant effects of exercise. These studies demonstrate that physical activity alters brain levels of neurotransmitters and/or neurotrophic factors that may ameliorate symptoms of depression. Other studies conducted in his laboratory have shown that exercise may enhance learning and memory through a similar mechanism. More recently, they have discovered that exercise exerts neuroprotective effects, and are currently examining the role of the neurotransmitter galanin in these effects. These findings suggest that the capacity for exercise to prevent the neural degeneration associated with aging, Alzheimer's disease, stroke, or trauma may be mediated by discrete neural systems. Dr. Holmes and his students are currently studying the effects of exercise on the prevention of stress-induced relapse in rodent models of addiction.

Laboratory: Behavioral Neuropharmacology Laboratory

Dr. Jennifer McDowell studies the nature of cognitive control. Effective cognitive control mediates important decisions on a daily basis. Healthy people have wide variations in their ability to invoke cognitive control, but specific subgroups have far greater problems with this behavioral regulation mechanism. Cognitive control deficits occur in many clinical groups, ranging from children who are obese to adults with psychiatric disorders, and especially those with psychotic disorders. Dr. McDowell integrates behavioral and multi-modal brain imaging methods (f/MRI, EEG, MEG) to provide a comprehensive understanding of cognitive problems. An important goal is to determine the extent to which cognitive control is plastic, and particularly how it may be enhanced. This is highly relevant for populations at risk, and also relevant for people who do not have a clinical diagnoses, but may be at risk by virtue of being genetically related to someone with a psychiatric disorder, being obese, or having other characteristics that may predispose one to improperly modulated cognitive control. She and Dr. Clementz co-direct the Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory.

Laboratory: Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory

Dr. Dean Sabatinelli addresses the dynamic brain mechanisms that underlie emotional stimulus processing. Through the use of noninvasive measures including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), dense-array electroencephalography (EEG), and peripheral psychophysiological recording, he investigates the organization of cortical and subcortical networks during emotional perception and imagery. Their research results are generally consistent with the hypothesis that affective cues engage basic brain processes that have evolved to mediate appetitive and defensive behaviors. Tracking the action of the brain requires exquisite resolution in space and time, thus the lab is also focused on refining the techniques used to acquire and analyze high-resolution brain imaging data.

Laboratory: Georgia Emotion Neuro-Imaging Laboratory

Dr. Lawrence Sweet integrates multimodal neuroimaging and neuropsychological assessments to examine brain-behavior relationships in clinical and at-risk populations (e.g., addictions, cardiovascular disease, early life adversity, aging). The Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory (CNS Lab) specializes in experimental design, and data acquisition, analyses, and interpretation for studies that employ functional magnetic resonance imaging, structural morphometry, and white matter lesion quantification. The CNS Lab is responsible for data analyses and consultation for several local and multi-site NIH-funded research studies.

Laboratory: Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory

Affiliated Neuroscience Faculty

Dr. Steve Miller works to understand central nervous system mechanisms related to cognition seen in aging, aging pathology, and traumatic brain injury. This is accomplished through the use of traditional neuropsychological paradigms, structural and functional magnetic resonance brain imaging (MRI/fMRI), and cognitive intervention. Special foci of this work include geriatric aging and functional independence, aging psychopathology, concussive injury, and evaluation of data validity.

Laboratory: Neuropsychology and Memory Assessment Laboratory

Dr. Greg Strauss uses a translational approach to study various aspects of reward and emotion in schizophrenia, relying on theoretical frameworks and methods from the field of affective neuroscience (e.g., fMRI, EEG/ERPs, eye tracking, electrocardiography, electrodermal activity, electromyography). Traditionally, these studies have focused on the etiology of negative symptoms of schizophrenia (e.g., avolition, andhedonia, and asociality). Examples of specific topics include examining whether abnormalities in different components of reward processing (e.g., reinforcement learning, effort-cost computation, value representation, action selection) and cognition-emotion interactions (e.g., memory, attention) predict the severity of negative symptoms using a variety of methods. More recently, the lab is also investigating whether abnormalities in emotion and reward processing predict conversion to psychosis in adolescents and young adults at clinical-high risk for developing a psychotic disorder (i.e., the prodromal phase).

Laboratory: Clinical Affective Neuroscience Laboratory

Associated University Resources

Bio-Imaging Research Center 

Biomedical & Health Sciences Institute 

Integrated Life Sciences Program 

Vision Science is an area of study that is based on facts and theories from a wide array of sources such as anatomy and physiology, physics and optics, cognitive neuroscience and psychology, and biochemistry and genetics. The study of Sensation and Perception is the oldest sub-discipline within Psychology and the visual system is one of the best worked out neurological systems in the body. Nonetheless, Vision Science remains a dynamic and growing area of interdisciplinary study. The Vision Sciences track within the department of Psychology encompasses this breadth and focus with faculty that concentrate on the sensory, perceptual, and cognitive aspects of the field. Our goal is to train students for careers in teaching, research and/or industry.

Core Vision Sciences Faculty:

Dr. James M. Brown studies visual perception, perceptual organization, and attention. Research in the Visual Perception Laboratory is aimed at trying to understand how we organize, perceive, and attend to our visual world. Our general research approach could be described as a combination of cognitive psychophysics and visual neuroscience. We use psychophysical methods to explore the relationship between the physical stimulus and what is perceived (i.e., cognitive psychophysics) while at the same time seeking to understand these perceptual experiences based on current knowledge about the neural machinery of the visual brain (i.e., visual neuroscience). An example of this approach includes recent studies of figure-ground perception from the perspective of activity within and between the dorsal and ventral visual streams. Other examples of topics of study include illusions, objects, and scenes. Recent collaborative research has expanded this approach to eye movement behavior.

Laboratory: Visual Perception Laboratory

Dr. Randy Hammond studies all aspects of the human visual system. This extends from basic studies of the cornea, lens and retina to applied studies of visual processing within the brain. A primary focus of his laboratory has been the investigation of how lifestyle, primarily dietary, influences both the development of degenerative disease and the normal function of the central nervous system. For example, psychophysical methods are used to measure the concentration of the dietary carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin within the fovea (termed macular pigment or the macula lutea) and have related those pigments to various aspects of retinal and brain function.

Laboratory: Vision Sciences Laboratory

Dr. Lisa Renzi-Hammond is adjunct faculty in the department and studies the ways in which visual function can serve as a biomarker for central nervous system health and function across the lifespan. She is faculty in the College of Public Health and retains strong ties to the UGA Psychology Department through both teaching activities and research collaboration.

Laboratory: Vision Sciences Laboratory