Graduate Students

Andrew Fox
IGM
A-132 Waisman
608-310-5531

More about Drew

I am interested in the way that emotional and empathetic brain systems influence decision-making and pro-social behaviors. During my graduate career I hope to use functional brain imaging in both humans and rhesus monkeys (macaque mulatta), to investigate how these interactions occur. Eventually I hope my research leads to novel ways of triggering these brain systems to produce positive behavioral outcomes.

First year project (2006): The Amygdala: A Neural Substrate of Behavioral Inhibition in Rhesus Monkeys.

Jamie Hanson
IGM
394 Waisman
608-890-2525

Currently, I am directing a large study examining brain development and early experience. This work seeks to answer how brain development and plasticity give rise to both the commonality and individual differences in a behavioral repertoire.

First year project (2006): The Correlates of Early Experience on Brain Development: Insights from International Adoptees.

Awards: 2011 Vilas Conference Presentation Award, Graduate School, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2011 Poster and Travel Award, Sackler Colloquium: Biological Embedding of Early Social Adversity: From Fruit Flies to Kindergartners, National Academy of Sciences.
2011 Fellow, NIMH Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience, University of California Santa Barbara
2011 Schwartz Fellowship, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2011 Travel Award, Determinants of Executive Function & Dysfunction Annual Conference, NIMH Interdisciplinary Behavioral Science Center, University of Colorado at Boulder
2010 Vilas Conference Presentation Award, Graduate School, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2010 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) from the NIMH for the predoctoral project "Neurodevelopmental Correlates of Reward Processing and Adolescent Substance Abuse".
2010 Hertz Travel Award, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2010 Population Health Dissertation Grant, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
2009 Hertz Travel Award, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2007 Fellow, John Merck Fund Sackler Summer Institute on the Biology of Developmental Disabilities, Cornell University
2003 Travel Award, Wisconsin Symposium on Emotion, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2003 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation

Aaron Heller
Clinical
T-125 Waisman
608-890-3076

My research interests include the influence of body states and positions on emotion and memory, as well as the neural underpinnings of approach and avoidant behaviors. Additionally, I plan to pursue a research project investigating the degree to which one's goals may affect or even override the encoding, perception, and memory of stimuli in one's environment.

First year project (2007): "Linking perception and action: The consequences of behavioral predisposition on response time to affective stimuli."

Awards: 2008 James L. Davis Memorial Graduate Support Fund, "Using neuroscience methodology to advance understanding of clinical depression".

Regina Lapate
IGM
T-125 Waisman
608-263-3672

My research interest lies in the possibility of reforming the description and assessment of manifestations and disturbances along the spectrum of mental processes. I am attracted to affective neuroscience due to its utilization of a psychophysiological approach to mental disorders as an alternative to an exclusively phenomenological one. Such perspective brings direct implications to the conceptualization and appraisal of health in a broad dimension.

I am particularly interested in better understanding emotion-pain interactions, as well as the role of emotional awareness in affective regulation.

First year project (2009): "Assessing the Contribution of Affective Style to the Voluntary Regulation of Pain: Integrating Psychophysiology and Neuroimaging in an Investigation of Individual Differences."

Awards:
2010 James L. Davis Fellowship for research in Affective Neuroscience: "Probing the pervasiveness (and persistency) of implicit and explicit emotional memories";
2009 SPR Student Poster Award for her poster entitled "The Contribution of Affective Style to the Successful Downregulation of Pain: A Psychophysiological and Neuroimaging Investigation";
2009 Hertz Foundation and Royalty Research Fellowship travel award.

Daniel Levinson
Clinical
S-119C Waisman

I'm taking part in developing behavioral games sensitive to ways meditation influences emotion and attention. The vision is to understand the brain processes that allow people excel at these behaviors, and how these processes may be facilitated.

First year project (2009): "Mind Wandering Increases with Working Memory Capacity in Non-demaning Contexts."

Awards: 2010-2011 Mind & Life Institute Francisco J. Varela Research Award;
2008 Fetzer Institute Fellowship, Fetzer Initiative on the Neuroscience of Love, Compassion, and Forgiveness.

Sharee Light
Clinical
S-119C Waisman
608-890-2960

Sharee's primary research interest is focused on elucidating the neural bases of positive emotion, with an emphasis on empathy (i.e., the process of understanding and interpreting the mental and emotional states of others and experiencing resultant, related emotions and an other-oriented feeling of goodwill) and contentment as distinct types of positive emotion. Her interest in studying the neural bases of contentment and pleasure comes from her interest in the symptom of anhedonia (i.e., a lack of, or reduced ability to experience pleasure) observed in major depressive disorder (MDD). Sharee also has an interest in separating empathy into its component parts—(a) vicarious emotion and (b) feelings of goodwill using behavioral and psychophysiological methods.

First year project (2005): "The Role of Right-Frontal Activity in a Distinct Form of Positive Affect and Its Relation to Empathetic Temperament."

Awards: 2006 SPR Tursky Award for Excellence in Predoctoral Research in Psychophysiology poster "Reduced activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex during the regulation of positive affect is a neural marker of anhedonia;” 2009 Ford Dissertation Fellowship Honorable Mention; 2010 Advanced Opportunity Fellowship (National Science Foundation); 2010 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory workshop on "Biology of Social Cognition" scholarship.

Jenny Liu
Clinical
S-119C Waisman
jliu87@wisc.edu

My main research plan is to study the social-cognitive-affective processes of meditation for both regulation of negative emotion as well as facilitation of well-being and positive emotions.

David Perlman
IGM
A-127 Waisman
608-890-1386

My original background is in physics, with followup in statistics and computer programming. I have taken course work with a focus on statistical methodology, functional neuroimaging, model-based psychology including neuroeconomics and behavioral game theory, and clinical psychology, particularly depression. My research work has focused on an in-depth development of fMRI methodology skills, and execution and analysis of fMRI experiments relating to cognitive modulation of pain perception in normal participants as well as in long-term meditation practitioners. I am currently developing the outline of my dissertation research program, which will involve studying relations between affective chronometry/affective hysteresis, cognitive models of depression, and cognitive modulation of pain perception. I will be studying the central constructs of self-focused attention, and emotional regulation/reactivity, attempting to use these constructs to tie together the various measures. In the bigger picture, I am interested in how techniques such as meditation and fMRI neurofeedback could be used to generate improvements in the functioning of these systems. I have been involved in the design of studies of meditation, as well as piloting fMRI neurofeedback on our scanner. I am also interested in using advanced PET tracers to look at the involvement of modulatory neurotransmitters, particularly dopamine, in these potential improvements.

Awards: 2009 Fetzer Institute Fellowship, Fetzer Initiative on the Neuroscience of Love, Compassion, and Forgiveness;
2010 Mind and Life Institute Varela award recipient, "Hedonic sustainability in the BOLD response to selfish and altruistic rewards".

Brianna Schuyler
NTP
T-117 Waisman
608-265-2062

My work so far has focused on ways to analyze connectivity between brain regions in functional MRI data. I am also interested in studying the effects that meditation has on an individual's well-being and how it effects one's brain.

Helen Weng
Clinical
A-125 Waisman
608-263-0269

My main research interest is how we may most effectively regulate both negative and positive emotion that leads to increased personal well-being as well as altruistic behavior towards others. I study meditation as a set of practices that may increase effective emotion regulation. I am also interested in how meditation may help to alleviate and maintain remission from mood and anxiety disorders.

My current research involves studying compassion meditation as an alternate form of emotion regulation compared to cognitive reappraisal using fMRI and economic behavioral measures. I am collaborating with Drew Fox to develop an economic decision-making task that will be sensitive to compassion training. I am also studying how mindfulness meditation training affects automatic emotion regulation processing compared to an active control group.

First year project (2006): "Neural Differences in Compassion Meditation and Cognitive Reappraisal as Emotion Regulation Strategies to Negative Social Stimuli."

Awards: 2012 Graduate Student Award (and Travel Award), Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Presentation: "Multi-Voxel Pattern Analysis of Brain States After Compassion Training Predicts Charitable Donations"
2008 Fetzer Institute Fellowship, Fetzer Initiative on the Neuroscience of Love, Compassion, and Forgiveness
2008 Travel Award: International Symposium "Foundations of Human Social Behavior"
2008 Hertz Foundation Research Fellowship Award (and Travel Grant) 2007 Francisco J. Varela Memorial Grant Award;
2007 Hertz Foundation Research Fellowship Award;
2007 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mention.

Helen Weng Joe Wielgosz
Clinical
S-119C Waisman
608-890-2960
wielgosz@wisc.edu

My broad motivation is to explore integrated models of emotional health that recognize the complex interactions of cognition, emotion, the body, and the interpersonal environment. I plan to focus my research on phenomena that cross these boundaries in interesting ways.

First year project (2011): "Embodiment of Anxiety: Body Posture Modulates Response to Unpredictable Threats."