People

Current Lab Members:
	Ralph Adolphs, Ph.D. Contact Office: Broad Rm # 61 Phone: (626) 395-4486 Email: radolphs(at)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(at)hss.caltech.edu Research Interests Biosketch 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: 626-395-5796 Fax: 626-395-2000 Email: jmt(at)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: 57 Broad Center Corner of Del Mar & Wilson Pasadena, CA 91101 (626) 395-4899 Scripps College: 120 Steele Hall Scripps College 1030 Columbia Ave. Claremont, CA 91711 (909) 607-0914 Research Interests Prof. Spezio is a social neuroscientist who seeks to understand the systems in the mind and brain underlying evaluative cognition, specifically in the social domain. His previous work showed 1) that high-functioning adults with autism exhibit a deficit in top-down attentional processing that results in the abnormal use of facial information during emotional judgments (even when controlling for gaze); 2) that the amygdala is vital for typical gaze to the eyes in real conversations; 3) that the insula is involved in preferentially processing negative cues from a politician's visual appearance, affecting voters' decisions in real elections; and 4) that decision-makers' propensity to overly report the truth in sender-receiver games is due primarily to effects of cognitive load during deception, and not to concern for others' outcomes. Prof. Spezio continues to investigate cognitive and neural processes of social decision-making, focusing on autism, political judgment, and empathy and compassion in morally relevant action, and the role of contemplative practices in reshaping these processes.

	Oana Tudusciuc, Ph.D. Contact Office: Broad Rm # 55 Email: oana(at)hss.caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-6212 Research Interests Oana has obtained an M.D. in Iasi, Romania, under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Cristina Rusu and a Ph.D. in Tubingen, Germany, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Andreas Nieder. Currently, she is a postdoc at the Adolphs lab, studying the role of the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex in emotion processing, using intracranial recordings in humans.

	Keise Izuma, Ph.D. Contact Office: Broad Rm # 32 Email: izuma(at)caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-8982 Research Interests Keise is a postdoc at the Adolphs Lab investigating the neural mechanism of how our preferences are modulated by social or cognitive factors. He is also interested in social reward processing and decision-making.

	Jed T. Elison, Ph.D. Contact Email: jelison(at)hss.caltech.edu Research Interests Jed is a postdoctoral fellow in the Adolphs lab studying social neuroscience and amygdala function. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill under the supervision of Steve Reznick and Joe Piven. Jed's research interests include the developmental processes and neural mechanisms that support specialized information processing, as well as the putative mechanisms that underlie atypical development.

	Damian Stanley, Ph.D. Contact Office: Broad Rm # 32 Email:dstanley(at)caltech.edu Phone:(626)395-8982 Home Page Research Interests My research integrates behavioral and fMRI techniques from Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuroeconomics, Reinforcement Learning, and Social and Clinical Psychology with the goal of constructing a computational account of the neural mechanisms involved in learning about other people and using what we have learned to make social decisions.

	Robert Spunt, Ph.D. Contact Office: Broad Rm # 59 Email: spunt(at)caltech.edu Home Page Research Interests Bob is a postdoctoral scholar in the Adolphs Lab who uses both behavioral and neuroimaging techniques to investigate social inference. Specifically, his work is concerned with understanding how the behaviors we observe (e.g., actions and emotions) are used to infer something unobservable about a person, such as their mental states or personality traits. Currently, he is focused on characterizing individual differences in this process.

	Justin Feinstein, Ph.D. Contact Office: Broad Rm # 57 Email: jfein(at)caltech.edu Research Interests Dr. Feinstein's research investigates how the human brain produces emotion and feeling. He is particularly interested in understanding the neural basis of fear and panic by studying rare patients with focal bilateral amygdala lesions.

	Dirk Neumann, Ph.D. 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 Dirk was a graduate student in the Adolphs Lab and is currently a visiting associate in Biology, working in the Adolphs lab. He is interested in functional neuroanatomy of visual and emotional information processing.

	Remya Nair, M.S. Contact Office: Broad Rm # 55 Email: rnair(at)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(at)caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-6505 Research Interests Catherine is a lab administrator and research assistant in the Adolphs Lab. She helps to manage the autism project, and aids experimenters in running fMRI and behavioral projects. She also helps to manage the administrative needs of the lab.

	Tim Armstrong, B.A Contact Office: Broad Rm # 59 Email: tsarmstr(at)caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-4868 Research Interests Tim graduated from UCSD in 2008 with a degree in psychology and is a research technician for the Adolphs Lab. His current project, working with Lynn Paul, provides all resources for human subject recruitment, assessment, fMRI, and databasing for the Conte Center: Core 3 research. He is interested in the general field of behavioral neuroscience and decision making in the prefrontal cortex.

	Shuo Wang Contact Office: Broad Rm # 63, MC: 114-96 Email: shuo(at)caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-4025 Home Page Research Interests Wang is a graduate student at Caltech's Computation and Neural Systems Ph.D. program. He received his Bachelor's degree from National University of Singapore. Wang is interested in studying social saliency -- how the brain finds out what is important in social interaction and how the brain represents and integrates social cues. He is also interested in decision making, consciousness and visual attention. His experiments involve psychophysics and human intracranial recording.

	Alma Gharib Contact Office: Broad Rm # 62 Email: agharib(at)caltech.edu Phone: (626) 395-8959 Research Interests Alma is a graduate student in Biology at Caltech. She received her Bachelors degree in Biology from UCSD and her Masters degree in Art History from Columbia. She is interested in automatic responses in aesthetic judgment, emotion and empathy.

	Laura Loesch Contact Caltech MC 136-93 Email: lloesch(at)caltech.edu Research Interests Laura is a graduate student in Computation and Neural Systems at Caltech. She received her Bachelor's degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from Scripps College. Laura is interested in how we use facial and extra-facial cues to make social judgments.

	Shuichi Takahashi Contact Email: shuichi(at)caltech.edu Research Interests Shuichi is a visiting scholar in the Adolphs lab investigating the psychological influence of 2D/3D images on emotion. He has worked for Sony Corporation in Tokyo as a research engineer. He has years of experience in 3-D technologies and human vision. His research interests include display technologies, image processing, the human visual system, and cognition and perception.

	Ghoncheh Ayazi, B.S. Contact Office: Broad Rm # 59 Email: gayazi(at)caltech.edu Research Interests Ghoncheh is a volunteer in the Adolphs' Lab and is currently researching the computational basis of theory of mind. She earned a B.S. in Cognitive Science from UC San Diego, and wishes to pursue a PhD in Social Psychology. She is particularly interested in the neural and physiological mechanisms associated with emotion experience and regulation in healthy and psychopathological populations.

Former Lab Members:

	Dan Kennedy, Ph.D. Contact Email: dpk(at)indiana.edu Home Page Research Interests Dan graduated from the UCSD Neuroscience program, having done his thesis on fMRI in autism under Eric Courchesne. He worked as a post-doc in the Adolphs Lab doing research on personal space and functional connectivity in autism. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the Social Brain and Cognition Lab at Indiana University.

	Nao Tsuchiya, Ph.D. Contact Address: Lab for adaptive intelligence, Brain Science Institute, RIKEN, Hirosawa 2-1 Wako-shi Saitama-Ken 351-0198 Japan Email:naotsu(at)gmail.com Affiliation: PRESTO researcher in JST, Japan Visiting researcher in RIKEN, Japan Visiting researcher in Caltech Home Page Research Interests Nao worked as a postdoc at the Adolphs Lab doing research on the differences between conscious and non-conscious processing of emotional information. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the School of Psychology and Psychiatry, Monash University, Australia. 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.

	Elina Birmingham, Ph.D. Contact Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive Burnaby BC, Canada V5A 1S6 Email: ebirming(at)sfu.ca Home Page Research Interests Elina worked as a postdoc at Caltech investigating the role of the amygdala in orienting attention to social stimuli within complex scenes. Elina is now an Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.

	Jan Glaescher, Ph.D. Contact Email: glascher(at)hss.caltech.edu 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.

	Alice Lin Contact Email: alicel(at)caltech.edu Research Interests Alice was 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.

	Jonathan Harel Contact Email: harel(at)klab.caltech.edu Home Page Research Interests Jonathan was a graduate student working with Professor Adolphs and Professor Christof Koch to investigate face processing and individual differences in the human brain using fMRI.

	Ronnie Bryan Contact Email: ronnie(at)caltech.edu Research Interests Ronnie was a CNS graduate student working with Professor Adolphs and Professor Perona to investigate the visual processes underlying rapid inferences about trust.

	Brian Cheng, B.S. Contact Email: c7cheng(at)gmail.com Research Interests Brian Cheng was a research assistant in the Adolphs lab. He graduated from UCSD in 2009 with a BS in Biochemistry/cell biology. Currently, he is a graduate student at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

	Jessica Escobedo, Ph.D. 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.

	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 at 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.

	Jason S. Minamora Research Interests Jason was a graduate student in Caltech's Computations and Neural Systems program.He also helped implementing and refining automated cortical surface reconstruction tools that will permit more accurate discrimination of pathologies in the AgCC populations

	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. 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.

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

	David Kahn, B.Sc. Research Interests David is a Caltech alum (class of 2006) who worked as a research assistant in the lab from 2007 until 2008. He worked primarily on analysis of eyetracking data and segmentation of the brains of subjects with agenesis of the corpus callosum. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania under the mentorship of Robert Schultz and Geoffrey Aguirre.

People

Current Lab Members:

Former Lab Members: