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
IGM
206 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
608-890-2482
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
S109 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 award: Using neuroscience methodology to advance understanding of clinical depression.
Allison Jahn
Clinical
A134 Waisman
608-263-5641
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
A134 Waisman
608-263-5641
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: 2008 Ramona Messerschmidt Award for Graduate Research;
2008 Organization for Human Brain Mapping (HBM) Conference Travel Award;
2007 New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) Young Investigator Award for conference travel;
2007 Hertz Foundation Research Fellowship Award (and travel grant);
2006 Roderick Menzies Memorial Scholarship for Collaborative Graduate Student Research (and travel grant)
Regina Lapate
IGM
206 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 especially interested in the relationships between interoceptive abilities, affective chronometry and pain processing. Currently, I am involved in psychophysiological and neuroimaging data acquisition, processing and analysis for the MIDUS (MidLife in the US) and Pain Regulation studies.
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: 2009 SPR Student Poster Award for her poster entitled "The Contribution of Affective Style to the Successful Downregulation of Pain: A Psychophysiogical and Neuroimaging Investigation";
2009 Hertz Foundation and Royalty Research Fellowship travel award.
Daniel Levinson
Clinical
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: 2008 Fetzer Institute Fellowship, Fetzer Initiative on the Neuroscience of Love, Compassion, and Forgiveness.
Sharee Light
Clinical
S109 Waisman
608-809-1386
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 SPR 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: 2007 AGEP/NSF Consortium for Diversity Summer Stipend and Predoctoral Research Award;
2006 Ford Fellowship;
2006 Lyn Abramson Award for Cognitive Approaches to Psychopathology;
2004 University of Wisconsin, Madison, Advanced Opportunity Fellowship;
2004 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mention.
Brendon Nacewicz
MD/PhD
T113 Waisman
608-890-3073
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 pursuing a model of chronic overload or "allostatic load" in the amygdala in autism. To this end, I am conducting a longitudinal analysis of amygdala volume in adolescence and attempting to characterize excitation-inhibition ratios through magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) estimates of glutamate and GABA.
Awards: 2008 Travel Award for the ISMRM Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Workshop;
2008 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) from the NIMH;
2007 Wayne & Jean Roper Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship Award;
2006 Student Travel Award, International Meeting for Autism Research (INSAR);
2006
Zeaman Travel Award, Mtg. on Res. & Theory in Intellectual & Dev. Disabilities.
David Perlman
IGM
S109 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.
First year project (2008): "Effects of long-term meditation practice on brain hemodynamic response to painful stimulus."
Brianna Schuyler
NTP
T510 Waisman
608-263-3672
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
A125 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: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.