Caltech Emotion and Social Cognition Laboratory

People

Current Lab Members:
	Ralph Adolphs, Ph.D. Contact At Caltech: Room 331b HSS 228-77 Caltech, Pasadena 91125 (626)-395-4486 (office) radolphs@hss.caltech.edu Research Interests Dr. Adolphs received his Bachelor's degree from Stanford University, and his Ph.D. in neurobiology from Caltech. He did post-doctoral work with Antonio Damasio at the University of Iowa, beginning his studies in human neuropsychology, with a focus on the recognition of emotional facial expressions. Since 2004 he holds an appointment as Professor at Caltech, as well as an adjunct appointment in the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa.

	Lynn K. Paul, Ph.D. Contact At Caltech: Caltech MC 228-77 Pasadena, CA 91125 (626) 395-4077 At Fuller Graduate School: Fuller Graduate School of Psychology 180 N. Oakland Ave. Pasadena, CA 91101 (626) 584-5533 lkpaul@hss.caltech.edu Research Interests Dr. Paul is a Senior Research Fellow at Caltech. Her primary research focus is the role of the corpus callosum in emotions and social cognition. Dr. Paul is heading the Caltech Corpus Callosum Research Program and an inter-institutional research consortium on AgCC. The purpose of the Caltech AgCC Project is to characterize the neuroanatomy, effective connectivity, cortical organization, emotional responsiveness and social cognition in adults with Primary AgCC. These studies will in turn provide insight into the role of the corpus callosum in social-cognitive and emotional processing in people with various other diagnoses, including autism and schizophrenia. This AgCC Research Consortium involves collaboration of researchers from California Institute of Technology, Fuller Graduate School of Psychology/Travis Research Institute, University of California in San Francisco, and University of Southern California. Dr. Paul is also the founding president of the National Organization of Disorders of the Corpus Callosum (NODCC), a non-profit corporation that gathers and disseminates information on these conditions to individuals with corpus callosum disorders, their families and professionals. Recent Publications on the Corpus Callosum Brown, W.S., Paul, L.K. and Marion, S.D. Developmental neuropsychology of the cerebral commissures. Requested chapter for D. Molfese, Ed., Handbook of Developmental Neuropsychology. Paul, L.K., Schieffer, B., and Brown, W.S. (2004). Social processing deficits in primary agenesis of the corpus callosum: Narratives from the Thematic Apperception Test. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology,19, 215-225. Paul, L. K., Van Lancker-Sidtis, D., Schieffer, B., Dietrich, R., & Brown, W. S. (2003). Communicative deficits in individuals with agenesis of the corpus callosum: Nonliteral language and affective prosody. Brain & Language, 85, 313-324. Hines, R. J., Paul, L. K., & Brown, W. S. (2002). Spatial attention in agenesis of the corpus callosum: Shifting attention between visual fields. Neuropsychologia. 40, 1804-1814. Brown, W. S., Thrasher, E. D. & Paul, L. K. (2001). Interhemispheric Stroop effect in partial and complete agenesis of the corpus callosum. Journal of International Neuropsychological Society, 7, 302-311. Brown, W. S. & Paul, L. K. (2000). Cognitive and psychosocial deficits in agenesis of the corpus callosum with normal intelligence. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 5, 135-157. Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum Project

	J. Michael Tyszka, Ph.D. Contact 2A Broad 114-96 California Institute of Technology 1200 E California Blvd Pasadena CA 91125 Tel: 626-395-5793 Fax: 626-395-2000 Email: jmt@caltech.edu Biosketch Research Interests Dr. Tyszka's research interests center on the structure-function relation in human brain and the extent to which non-invasive imaging methods such as MRI can shed light on this interaction. His current research ranges from instrumentation development for MR microscopy to connectivity modeling in callosal agenesis with emphasis on the physics, engineering and quantitative analysis of magnetic resonance images. His collaborators include Ralph Adolphs, Lynn Paul, Dan Kennedy, Lin Zhao, Scott Fraser, Russ Jacobs, Elliott Sherr (UCSD) and Larry Frank (UCSD).

	Michael Spezio, Ph.D. Contact Caltech, Pasadena 91125 (626)-395-4899 (office) mlspezio@hss.caltech.edu Research Interests Dr. Spezio is interested in how social cognition, and social neuroscience, can elucidate our judgments of and behavior towards other people. Current studies include face-to-face eyetracking experiments, fMRI studies of affective touch and political judgments, as well as detailed analyses of how people with autism process faces.

	Jessica Escobedo, Ph.D. Contact (626)-395-4868 (office) edwards@caltech.edu Moral Stories Blog Site Research Interests Jessica is a graduate student in Caltech's Biology Ph.D. program. She received her undergraduate degree in Biochemical Neuroscience from Kenyon College in 2000. She is interested in the neural systems that underlie moral judgment, moral intuation and moral choices. Her thesis is on autobiographical memories for moral events. She is currently developing a database of moral stimuli from these memories.

	Nao Tsuchiya, Ph.D. Contact email:naotsu@gmail.com Home Page Research Interests Dr. Tsuchiya is interested in the differences between conscious and non-conscious processing of emotional information. Ongoing studies involve fMRI and behavioral studies that use continuous flash suppression, a technique he invented for controlled conscious suppression of visual stimuli under conditions similar to binocular rivalry.

	Dirk Neumann Contact Caltech, CNS 136-93 Pasadena, CA 91125 Office: Broad Rm # 57 Email: dirk at caltech.edu Phone: (626)395-3125 Home Page Research Interests I am studying computation and neural systems and am interested in emotional processing and its interaction with visual perception, visual attention and other cognitive processes.

	Jan Glaescher, Ph.D. Contact Office: Broad Rm # Email: glascher@hss.caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-3898 Research Interests Dr. Glaescher did his graduate work with Christian Buechel on emotional processing of facial expressions and temporal integration of predictive stimuli using fMRI. At Caltech, he is working jointly with Dr. Adolphs and Dr. O'Doherty on projects involving large-scale brain mapping and the application of learning theories to reward-based spatial learning in the context of virtual 3D mazes.

	Dan Kennedy, Ph.D. Contact Office: Broad Rm # 59 Email: kennedy@caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-4868 Research Interests Dan graduated from the UCSD Neuroscience program, having done his thesis on fMRI in autism under Eric Courchesne. He is now a post-doc working on autism.

	Oana Tudusciuc, Ph.D. Contact Office: Broad Rm # 55 Email: oana@hss.caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-6212 Research Interests Oana has a medical degree and obtained a PhD in the lab of Prof. Andreas Nieder. She is currently interested in the role of the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex in the processing of emotional expressions on faces.

	Elina Birmingham, Ph.D. Contact Office: Broad Rm # 59 Email: elinab@hss.caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-4868 Research Interests Elina did her doctorate with Alan Kingstone at the University of British Columbia, examining gaze selection in real world social scenes. She is now a postdoc at Caltech investigating the role of the amygdala in orienting our attention to socially salient stimuli, such as eyes. She is studying patients with amygdala lesions and individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and plans to use fMRI to study the functional link between amygdala activation and attention to socially salient stimuli.

	Remya Nair, M.S. Contact Office: Broad Rm # 55 Email: rnair@caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-6506 Research Interests Remya has a Masters in Biomedical Imaging Engineering and is a Staff Scientist at the Adolphs Lab. She is currently studying the functional organization of AgCC brains and Implicit Associations in Autism and is also responsible for general systems administration.

	Catherine Holcomb, B.A. Contact Office: Broad Rm # 55 Email: cholcomb@caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-6505 Research Interests Catherine Holcomb is a research assistant in the Adolphs Lab. She graduated from Scripps College in 2008 with a bachelor's degree in psychology.

	Alice Lin Contact Office: Baxter 332c Email: alicel@caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-4297 Research Interests Alice is a graduate student in Caltech's Computations and Neural Systems program. She received her undergraduate degrees in Biology and Business Economic Management from Caltech in 2005. She is interested in social reward processing and other neuroeconomic topics.

	Jason S. Minamora Contact Mail Code: MSC 114-96 Email: jsm@caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-5907 Research Interests Jason is a graduate student in Caltech's Computations and Neural Systems program. He is investigating structural and functional characteristics of adult brains with callosal agenesis and autism. He is also implementing and refining automated cortical surface reconstruction tools that will permit more accurate discrimination of pathologies in these populations.

	Yaear Ben Assa Research Interests Yaear is a physics major at Caltech working with Michael Spezio on the analysis of eyetracking data.

Former Lab Members:

	Fulvia Castelli, Ph.D. Research Interests Dr. Castelli worked with Professor Uta Frith in England investigating social cognition in people with autism. In Dr. Adolphs' lab, she is leading the recruitment and studies of people with autism and Asperger syndrome, with a special interest on investigating the connectivity of their brains.

	Jessica Levine, B.Sc. Research Interests Jessica was a research assistant with the Adolphs Lab. She graduated in 2007 from Duke University with a bachelor's degree in psychology and neuroscience.

	Jessica Stockburger Research Interests Jessica was Caltech undergraduate who worked as a SURF student in Dr. Adolphs' lab with Jessica Edwards on studies of gender stereotyping. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado.

	Matt Leonard Research Interests Matt graduated from Occidental College in 2006 with a B.A. in Cognitive Science (neuroscience specialization). He worked in the Adolphs lab for more than two years, designing, programming, and analyzing eye tracking and fMRI experiments for the Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum project. His undergraduate honors thesis was on visual search and attention in AgCC. Matt is currently a Ph.D student in the Cognitive Science department at UCSD, where he is working with Jeff Elman and Eric Halgren on several MEG studies of language development. His second year project uses MEG to investigate the neural basis of lexical representations in Spanish-English bilinguals.

	Po-Yin Samuel Huang Contact Address: MSC 260 Pasadena, CA 9112 Room: Broad 63 (summer) huangsamuel@hotmail.com Research Interests I am a undergraduate junior participating in the SURF program. The project that I'm currently working on is "Face-to-face Eye-tracking in Naturalistic Dyadic Social Interactions." I am working under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Spezio and supervision of Dr. Ralph Adolphs.

	Matthew Thill Research Interests Matt is a mathematics major at Caltech working with Dirk Neumann on MRI studies of the brain that look at its connectivity.

	David Kahn, B.Sc. Research Interests David is a Caltech alum who is a Research Assistant now. He is working primarily on segmentation of the brains of subjects with Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum, and on analysis of eyetracking data.

	Csilla Felsen Research Interests I am an undergraduate in biology and English, and will continue on to medical school after finishing at Caltech. My research projects with Naotsu Tsuchiya, supervised by Ralph Adolphs, involve measuring people's behavioral and neural responses to presentation of invisible stimuli, made invisible by continuous flash suppression, in addition to looking at how personality influences performance on emotion-based psychophysics tasks.

	Hackjin Kim, Ph.D. Contact Division of Humanities and Social Sciences California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA 91125, USA Tel.: +1 (626) 395-8989 Fax: +1 (626)793-8580 E-mail: kim@hss.caltech.edu Research Interests My research interest is in social cognitive neuroscience and neuroeconomics. I use computational modeling and functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques, to investigate brain mechanisms of emotional decision-making in human including facial expression recognition, face preference decision, and reward/punishment-based learning. At caltech, I am workng as a postdoctoral scholar with Ralph Adolphs, John O'Doherty, and Shinsuke Shimojo. Education 2004 Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA Advisor: Paul J. Whalen. Thesis: Human Amygdala Functions in Situations of Predictive Uncertainty: Functional MRI and Computational Modeling Studies. 1998 MA, Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA 1995 BA, Department of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul, Korea Journal Publications Kim H, and Whalen PJ. "A computational model of amygdala function in the detection and the resolution of predictive uncertainty." (Under Review). Kim H, Shimojo S, and O'Doherty JP. "Is avoiding an aversive outcome rewarding? Neural substrates of avoidance learning in the human brain." PLoS Biology (In Press). Whalen PJ, Kagan J, Cook RG, Davis FC, Kim H, Polis S, McLaren DL, Somerville LH, McLean AA, Maxwell JS, & Johnston T. (2004). "Human amygdala responsivity to fearful eye-whites." Science, 306, 2061. Kim H, Somerville LH, Johnstone T, Polis S, Alexander AL, Shin LM, & Whalen PJ. (2004). "Contextual modulation of amygdala responsivity to surprised faces." Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 1730-1745. Somerville LH, Kim H, Johnstone T, Alexander AL, and Whalen PJ. (2004). "Human amygdala responses during presentation of happy and neutral faces: Correlations with state anxiety." Biological Psychiatry, 55, 897-903. Kim H, Somerville LH, Johnstone T, Alexander AL, and Whalen PJ. (2003). "Inverse amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex responses to surprised faces." NeuroReport. 14, 2317-2322. Kim H, Somerville LH, McLean AA, Johnstone T, Shin LM, and Whalen PJ. (2003). "Functional MRI Responses of the Human Dorsal Amygdala/Substantia Inominata Region to Facial Expressions of Emotion." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Whalen PJ, Shin LM, Somerville LH, McLean AA, Kim H. (2002). "Functional neuroimaging studies of the amygdala in depression." Seminars in Clinical Neuropsychiatry, 7(4): 234-42. Rauch SL, Makris N, Cosgrove GR, Kim H, Cassem EH, Price BH, Baer L, Savage CR, Caviness VS, Jenike MA, and Kennedy DN. (2001). "A magnetic resonance imaging study of regional cortical volumes following stereotactic anterior cingulotomy." CNS Spectrums, 6(3), 214-222. Rauch SL, Kim H, Makris N, Cosgrove GR, Cassem EH, Savage CR, Price B, Nierenberg A, Shera D, Baer L, Buchbinder B, Caviness VS, Jenike MA, and Kennedy DN (2000). "Volumetric Reduction in Caudate Nucleus Following Stereotactic Lesions of Anterior Cingulate Cortex in Humans: A Morphometric Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study." Journal of Neurosurgery, 93(6), 1019-1025. Conference Presentations Kim H, Shimojo S, and O'Doherty JP. Is avoiding an aversive outcome rewarding? Neural substrates of avoidance learning in the human brain. Oral presentation at 2006 RIKEN Brain Science Institute Workshop on Topics in Reward and Addiction, Wako City, Japan. Buchanan TW, Kim H, Rudrauf D, Whalen PJ, and Adolphs R. Sex differences in contextual modulation of emotion and memory. Poster presentation at 2006 Annual Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) meeting in San Francisco, California. Kim H, Shimojo S, Adolphs R, and O'Doherty JP. Does avoiding a punishment act as a reward? An fMRI study of avoidance learning. Poster presentation at the 2005 SFN conference in Washington, DC. Kim H, Somerville LH, Johnstone T, Davis FC, and Whalen PJ. Amygdala and nucleus accumbens responses to neutral faces demonstrate inverse correlations with state anxiety. Poster presentation at the 2004 SFN conference in San Diego, CA. Kim H, and Whalen PJ. (2004). A Computational Model of Amygdala-Basal Forebrain Interaction in the Detection and Resolution of Predictive Uncertainty. Oral presentation at the 8th International Conference on Cognitive and Neural Systems in Boston, Massachusetts. Kim H, and Whalen PJ. (2003). A Computational Model of Amygdala-Basal Forebrain Interaction in the Detection and Resolution of Predictive Uncertainty. Slide presentation at the 2003 SFN conference in New Orleans. Kim H, Somerville LH, Johnstone T, Polis S, Alexander AL, Shin LM, and Whalen PJ. (2004). Contextual modulation of amygdala responsivity to surprised faces. Poster presentation at 2004 Annual Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) meeting in San Francisco, California. Whalen PJ, and Kim H. (2003). An fMRI task for the simulataneous assessment of amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex reactivity in humans. ACNP 42nd Annual Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Somerville LH, Kim H, McLaren DG, Johnstone T, and Whalen PJ. (2003). State Anxiety Correlates with Human Amygdala Response During Presentation of Happy and Neutral Faces. Poster presentation at 9th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping. June 18-22, 2003: New York, New York. Kim H, Somerville LH, McLean AA, Johnstone T, Shin LM, and Whalen PJ. (2002). Functional MRI Responses of the Human Dorsal and Ventral Amygdaloid Regions to Facial Expressions of Emotion. Program No. 780.6. 2002 Abstract Viewer/Itinerary Planner. Washington, DC: Society for Neuroscience, 2002. Online. Kim H, Somerville LH, McLean AA, Johnstone T, and Whalen PJ. (2002). An fMRI study of amygdala response to the facial expression of surprise. Poster presentation at the NYAS conference, "The Amygdala in Brain Function: Basic and Clinical Approaches." March 24-26, 2002: Galveston, Texas. Kim H. (1997). Cardiovascular Conditioning Model and the Whole-Body Information Process Hypothesis. Poster Presentation at the First Conference of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) on "What does Implicit Cognition tell us about Consciousness?" June 14-16, 1997: Claremont, California.

Summer and Visiting Students

Corinna Zygourakis

Corinna was a Caltech undergraduate who worked as a SURF student in Prof. John Allman's lab and collaborated with Dr. Adolphs on a study of social emotion recognition in lesion patients with damage to the frontoinsular cortex. She is currently a medical student at Harvard.

Jessica Stockburger

Jessica was Caltech undergraduate who worked as a SURF student in Dr. Adolphs' lab with Jessica Edwards on studies of gender stereotyping. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado.

Sam was Caltech undergraduate who worked as a SURF student, and later became a Research Assistant in Dr. Adolphs' lab. He is working with Drs. Spezio and Kim on studies of face-to-face eyetracking and social reward.

Alex is a Caltech undergraduate who worked as a SURF student with Dr. Castelli on designing animation videos that convey emotions.

Lisa is a Caltech undergraduate who was a SURF student with Dr. Spezio on the design of automated algorithms for detecting facial features from video. This was an important component of the face-to-face eyetracking project led by Dr. Spezio.

Matt graduated from Occidental College in 2006 with a B.A. in Cognitive Science (neuroscience specialization). He worked in the Adolphs lab for more than two years, designing, programming, and analyzing eye tracking and fMRI experiments for the Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum project. His undergraduate honors thesis was on visual search and attention in AgCC. Matt is currently a Ph.D student in the Cognitive Science department at UCSD, where he is working with Jeff Elman and Eric Halgren on several MEG studies of language development. His second year project uses MEG to investigate the neural basis of lexical representations in Spanish-English bilinguals.

Yota is an occasional visitor to the Adolphs lab from Tokyo. He is interested in emotional facial expressions, and the role that simulation can play in their recognition.

Andrew is a Caltech undergraduate and a 2006 SURF student with Dr. Spezio on an fMRI study of meditation.

Peter is a Caltech undergraduate and a 2006 SURF student working with Dr. Tsuchiya on an fMRI study of consciousness.

Agnieszka Lesniak

Agnieszka is a SURF student from Poland working with Jessica Edwards on the categorization and statistical analysis of different types of moral memories.

Michelle is a Caltech undergraduate working with Jessica Edwards on categorization of moral judgments.

Cory is a Caltech undergraduate working with Hackjin Kim on a functional imaging study of social reward.

Zhou is a SURF student from Singapore working with Nao Tsuchiya on a behavioral study of consciousness related to emotional facial expressions.

Wendy is a high-school student from Kansas working with Dirk Neumann on probabilistic tractography of the brain from diffusion-weighted MR data.

Alexis is an undergraduate from Pennsylvania working with Lynn Paul on patients with agenesis of the corpus callosum.