Lab Director
Scientists & Postdocs
Graduate Students
Research Staff
Administrative Staff
IT Staff
Recent LAN Alumni
Brogden address:
1202 W. Johnson Street
Madison, WI 53706
Waisman address:
1500 Highland Avenue
Madison, WI 53705
Shared lab line:
608-262-4443
(rings in Brogden 366, 381)
Brogden lab fax:
608-265-2875
Graduate Students
Andrew Fox
Clinical
T510 Waisman
608-263-3672
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
527 Waisman
608-262-5148
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.
Aaron Heller
Clinical
S117D Waisman
608-262-1920
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."
Allison Jahn
Clinical
S117D Waisman
608-262-1920
Generally, my research interests focus on examining how brain and body processes interact with the environment in the etiology and exacerbation of depression. My current interests involve elucidating the underlying mechanisms of information processing and emotional biases in depression.
First year project (2005): "Cortisol's Effect on Memory for Affective Information: An fMRI Investigation."
Awards: 2007 Hertz Foundation Research Fellowship Award (and travel grant); 2006 Roderick Menzies Memorial Scholarship for Collaborative Graduate Student Research (and travel grant); 2006 National Science Foundation (NSF) graduate research fellowship; 2004-05 Lyn Abramson Award for Cognitive Approaches to Psychopathology.
Jessica Kirkland
Clinical
S117D Waisman
608-263-0269
My primary research interest is the development of empathy, and the roles that a lack of empathy may play in the severity and persistence of childhood behavior problems. I'm specifically interested in using functional MRI and behavioral measures to investigate various aspects of empathy in children with conduct disorder and conduct problems.
First year project (2005): "Adolescents at Risk for Internalizing and Externalizing Disorders: Relationship of fMRI Activity During a Go/No Go Task to Longitudinal Behavioral and Demographic Data."
Awards: 2007 Hertz Foundation Research Fellowship Award (and travel grant); 2006 Roderick Menzies Memorial Scholarship for Collaborative Graduate Student Research (and travel grant)
Hyejeen Lee
Clinical
S109 Waisman
608-890-1386
More about Hyejeen
My dissertation investigates individual differences in the ability to voluntarily down-regulate negative affect and how these differences are indicated by the brain and psychophysiological measures. I also have a clinical interest in developing empirically-validated treatment protocols for effective emotion regulation.
Sharee Light
Clinical
S117D Waisman
608-263-0269
My 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 pleasure as distinct types of positive emotion. My interest in studying the neural bases of pleasure comes from my interest in the symptom of anhedonia (i.e., a lack of, or reduced ability to experience pleasure) observed in major depressive disorder (MDD).
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 Tursky Award for Excellence in Predoctoral Research in Psychophysiology.
Lisa Lindeman
IGM
105 Hiray
608-278-1025
More about Lisa
Sweet fluffy irises, splinters, melted chocolate, puppies, fart spray, warm ocean waves, roller coasters and sunlight. These evoke pleasure or pain in the body, joy, sadness, delight or revulsion, but how do abstract concepts lead to emotion? In my research, I explore the possibility that the power of thoughts like hope, connection, insult, and progress may lie in their metaphorical roots in physical experience. In addition to supplying the focus of my academic life, emotion is also the substrate of my amateur creative endeavors, the primary spoken language in my interpersonal domain, the object of my daily meditations, and that which I wish to share with as many people as possible. A Native American originally from Oklahoma, I earned my BA in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. I have two young boys, Erik and Luke.
First year project: Do emotional burdens feel like physical burdens? The role of conceptual metaphor and somatic imagery in appraisal in structuring emotional experience.
Awards: 2004 University of Wisconsin, Madison, Advanced Opportunity Fellowship; 2004 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mention; 2006 Ford Fellowship; 2006 Lyn Abramson Award for Cognitive Approaches to Psychopathology; 2007 AGEP/NSF Consortium for Diversity Summer Stipend and Predoctoral Research Award.
Brendon Nacewicz
MD/PhD
A-130 Waisman
608-262-5050
My research interests are the structural and functional correlates of social function/dysfunction in the autistic brain, with particular focus on the amygdala. I am interested in the volumes of structures likely involved in processing of social stimuli as assessed by region of interest tracing on MR images. I am also interested in the physical connectivity between these structures as measured using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).
Awards: 2007 Wayne & Jean Roper Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship Award.
David Perlman
IGM
S109 Waisman
608-890-1386
David's blog
Fun with Dave's head
I am currently working on functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of long-term meditation practitioners. I am also working on realtime fMRI neurofeedback, particularly the possibility of voluntarily up- and down-regulating amygdala activity. This may lead to studies on emotion regulation and affect-immune interactions. I may also work on studies involving thermal imaging.
I am exploring and developing my research focus, as I have recently come to this field from a background in physics and computers. I also have a strong personal interest in statistics. Eventually I hope to study effects of abstract beliefs and cognitive styles on emotion and psychopathology, and the role of societal factors in this process.
Melissa Rosenkranz, Ph.D.
A130 Waisman
608-262-5050
The neural-immune and biochemical mechanisms by which individual differences in affective responding modulate resilience to and progression of disease. The impact of meditation practice on affective responding and, subsequently, on the neural-immune and biochemical mechanisms underlying resilience or vulnerability to disease.
Tim Salomons
Clinical
A-132 Waisman
608-263-1968
More about Tim
I'm interested in how the brain processes nociceptive information, how this information is modulated under various affective states and the implications of this modulation for the co-morbidity of pain and affect disorders.
Brianna Schuyler
NTP
S109 Waisman
608-890-1387
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.
Alexander J. Shackman
Biological
T510 Waisman
608-263-3672
More about Alex
My primary research interests are focused on identifying the distributed neural circuitry in which affect and cognition are instantiated and to describe their lawful relations with one another. Within the realm of affect, my major focus is on threat-evoked anxiety and fear conditioning. My armamentarium includes a host of behavioral, psychophysiological, and and functional MRI techniques.
Helen Weng
Clinical
S117D 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: 2007 Francisco J. Varela Memorial Grant Award; 2007 Hertz Foundation Research Fellowship Award; and a 2007 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mention.