Faculty Affiliates | The Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences

Research Interests:

My research focuses on the analysis and cognition of musical expectation, mainly geared toward understanding how we learn and categorize musical style. Other research interests include the analysis and cognition of musical form, musical segmentation, and music pedagogical applications of cognitive/psychological research. While much of my research focuses on popular genres, I am interested in understanding a wide variety of musical genres and cultures.

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Research Interests:

My interests reply on using behavioral neuroscience theory and methodology in human populations to help elucidate the neural bases of memory function. Currently, we are conducting studies examining how nicotine affects how people learn things and extinguish memories. We also are looking at how estrogen affects hippocampal sensitive memory in women. And, lastly, we are examining fear conditioning in humans in virtual reality environments in hopes of helping design effective strategies for treating anxiety.

Research Interests:

Dr. Brenick's research focuses on how children, adolescents, and adults experiences, make sense of, reason about, and respond to bias-based victimization. From a social justice perspective, she examines individual and group social and moral reasoning regarding interpersonal and systemic oppression and inequities. Furthermore, she designs and evaluates programmatic prevention and intervention measures to reduce intergroup conflict, discrimination, and inequity.

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I am a complex systems scientist. I study complex biological systems, particularly those arising in systems biology and systems neuroscience. I employ methodology from dynamical systems, network theory, Bayesian and nonparametric statistics, computational biology, and statistical signal processing. My work has focused heavily on inverse problems; inferring network and model structures from cellular time series measurements, protein sequences, and high-dimensional brain data. My work is strongly connected to data, and I continue to have many productive collaborations with experimentalists.

Research Interests:

My research investigates the features of speech and language in autistic children and adolescents who have minimal to low spoken language. In addition, we aim to understand the sensory-motor and neural correlates of expressive and receptive language in this population. We use a variety of flexible, autism-friendly behavioral and neuroimaging methods including natural language sampling, touchscreen assessments, experimental methods and functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

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My lab is interested in translating neurophysiological knowledge into interventions for neurological and psychiatric disorders. We are interested in conducting research that will aid in developing and translating advanced neurophysiological knowledge into novel treatments for medication-resistant schizophrenia. Specifically, we hope to test interventions and new chemical compounds to ameliorate pathological neural oscillations in schizophrenia.
Examples of our current research projects are: (1) using MRI techniques (fMRI, DTI), EEG, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate neural oscillations and auditory sensory processing in healthy participant and schizophrenia patients at the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center of Hartford Hospital, (2) investigating the effect of acute administration of ketamine on glutamate, GABA, and neuronal oscillations in healthy participants (simultaneous MRS-EEG recordings), (3) using machine-learning models to identify "optimal" neural oscillatory patterns from high definition scalp EEGs for cognitive functions and computer-assisted (i.e., brain-computer interface) cognitive remediation programs in healthy participants and patients with schizophrenia, (4) investigating the normal patterns of EEGs in healthy participants while they are performing the jitter orientation visual integration task, (5) investigating ketamine-induced changes of neural oscillations and parval bumin-positive interneurons in rats after acute and subchronic ketamine injections across different developmental stages by using intracranial recordings and staining methods.

Research Interests:

My research focuses on the physiology and function of hippocampal circuits with particular emphasis on neural network dynamics (e.g., theta and gamma oscillations) which support the transient formation and synchronization of neuronal ensembles across brain structures. Studies in my laboratory typically involve anatomical analyses, neurophysiological recordings of awake-behaving rodents and assessment of "episodic" (delayed conditional discrimination) memory performance.

Research Interests:

The overarching goal of my research program is to understand properties of the brain's stem cell niches, their potential for stem cell-mediated reparative functions, and the use and application of these findings to model and understand human disease. Currently, we combine 3D modeling of brain structures with detailed tissue histochemistry to generate longitudinal maps of gross structural changes at the cellular level. Projects include both animal models and human MR data and tissue, and focus on: (1) injury (concussion, traumatic brain injury), disease (fetal hydrocephalus, Alzheimer’s disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy) and aging.

Research Interests:

My research program centers on how language emerges within individuals and communities, as well as how atypical language experiences affect cognitive development. I study a new Deaf community sign language that emerged in Nicaragua in the 1970s and homesigners (deaf individuals who have not had the opportunity to acquire a conventional language). My latest project investigates the impact of language experience on the development of number concepts in deaf and hard of hearing children in the US.

Short IBACS film profiling Marie Coppola

Research Interests:

My laboratory examines the ontogeny of basic and higher-order cognitive skills during infancy and early childhood. Our work combines neuroscience and biopsychosocial perspectives, emphasizing connections between animal and human literature. Our primary research interests fall into three main themes: experimental investigation of early learning and memory; longitudinal and individual difference analysis of emerging executive functions; and neuroscience foundations of socio-cognitive development.

Research Interests:

My research is in computability theory and reverse mathematics, which are subfields of mathematical logic. Among the general questions I am interested in are how mathematicians prove the theorems they prove, what the limits are to what can be proved, and to what degree proofs can be generated algorithmically. More specifically, I try to variously describe the complexity of theorems and proof techniques (which may be regarded as methods of reasoning) from different parts of mathematics, and areas outside of mathematics like cognitive science, and look for connections between them.

Research Interests:

My research addresses a fundamental issue in human cognition: how constraints imposed by brain development and core neurocognitive processes impact language acquisition. As a scientist, I am intrigued by the interaction of language acquisition and brain development. As a clinician, I am motivated to understand the puzzles presented by atypical development, particularly autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and its consequences, because of what they mean for intervention. Although most research on language acquisition and neurocognitive processes is based on typically developing learners, the study of differences in development can lead to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of growth and change. We use multiple converging approaches in my lab: experimental behavioral tasks, structural and functional imaging, and eyetracking, in our research.

Research Interests:

Humans can easily recognize a familiar voice, identify a musical tune, or segregate a single speaker in a crowded room. Yet these seemingly simple tasks present major challenges to our most sophisticated computers. I study the central auditory system in mammals to understand how the brain encodes and recognizes natural sounds including speech. Our lab employs neural recordings in the auditory midbrain and cortex and neural models to understand the neural basis for sound recognition.

Research Interests:

Over the past 10 years my research has focused on the influence of language on the perception of speech sounds from infancy through young adulthood, investigating cross-cultural speech perception in native speakers of Spanish and English and cross-language speech perception in bilingual individuals. My primary research method is electrophysiology. However, I also employ behavioral and naturalistic paradigms and describe the results of my research across the lifespan from perceptual development.

Research Interests:

As a biomedical engineer, I'm involved in design of biomedical devices and interested in multidisciplinary approach to human centered design, rehabilitation, human-robot and exoskeleton interactions for the purpose of augmenting human capabilities, assisting disabled persons, increasing human performance and safety. The methodology brings many disciplines in its study of humans and their environments, including biomechanics, neuroscience, systems view, physiology and psychology.

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Research Interests:

Research in the laboratory is focused on the cellular and synaptic neurophysiology of neural circuits in the mammalian hypothalamus that regulate fundamental behavioral states such as sleep, arousal and feeding. Techniques are centered on using patch-clamp electrophysiology and pharmacology in brain slices in order to elucidate the cellular and synaptic properties of specific hypothalamic cell-types and their local and long-range synaptic connectivity. This approach is carried out in concert with a toolbox of neuroanatomical methods, optogenetic strategies to manipulate the excitability of genetically targeted neurons and through collaborative work, single-cell transcriptional profiling.

Research Interests:

I am interested in how we represent different dimensions of events during language processing. More specifically, I am interested in how changes in time, and state are processed and integrated into current event representations. For example, in sentences like “The woman will drop the ice cream. But first, she will look at the ice cream”, we must maintain two distinct representations of the ice cream - before and after it was dropped. But how do these representations interact as language unfolds?

Research Interests:

Biostatistics and Bioinformatics: specifically, survival analysis, longitudinal data analysis, multivariate analysis, functional data analysis, multilevel modeling, meta-analysis, experimental design, computational biology, Bayesian phylogenetics, analysis of omic (genomic, proteomic, and next generation sequence) data which includes visualization of data, statistical learning, dimension reduction, marker detection, test validation, multiple hypothesis testing, and prediction.

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Research Interests:

I am most interested in early nutrition of a preterm infant and long term health outcomes of prematurely born children. I am the director of the Regional Neonatal Neurodevelopmental Follow-Up Program at CT Children’s Medical Center. Currently, in collaboration with professors at UCONN health center, I am principal investigator (PI) or co- investigator on multiple projects that are directly aligned with my core interests of long term neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Research Interests:

The long-term goal of my research program is to understand the developmental biology of the central nervous system, particularly the cerebellum. I have established and maintained a long-standing research program studying how interplays between intrinsic and extrinsic factors control cell fate specification and cell differentiation. While we use mouse genetics as the primary research approach, our studies are augmented by complementary studies in chick, embryonic stem cells, and transcriptomics.

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Research Interests:

My research investigates the nature of language and its acquisition by studying American Sign Language (ASL), the acquisition of ASL by Deaf children, bimodal bilingual acquisition of ASL and spoken English by hearing children in Deaf-parented families, and the acquisition of English by hearing children. I am especially interested in how the study of sign languages can contribute to broadening understanding of what is universal and what is modality-specific.

Research Interests:

My research examines the roles of family, early child care, school and community for promoting children’s cognitive and social-emotional development, particularly in the context of economic and social disadvantages. One focus of this work is on the development of mathematics and spatial skills over childhood, seeking to understand the role of individual characteristics and environmental influences in order to identify opportunities for intervention.

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Research Interests:

My lab studies the mechanisms supporting robust responses to odors in the insect olfactory system. Currently, we are interested in how the molecular and cellular environment surrounding olfactory neurons influences their activity, and ultimately odor-driven behaviors. We take advantage of the tremendous number of genetic tools available in the fruit fly Drosophila in order to identify conserved molecules and mechanisms that likely have a similar role in insect vectors of human disease.

Research Interests:

My research program focuses on the neural and behavioral mechanisms that enable listeners to map the speech signal onto meaning. In this program of study, I use neuroimaging techniques, principally fMRI, to investigate how the brain responds to acoustic variation within and between categories, and behavioral methods to probe the mechanisms that allow for parsing the speech stream into meaningful categories. These questions are applied to typical populations as well as to individuals with acquired language disorders (aphasia) or developmental language disorders (reading disorder, language impairment).

Short IBACS film profiling Emily Myers

Research Interests:

My research interests target the roles of environment and biology in the question of how children acquire their first language. I investigate environmental effects via studies of typical children learning a wide range of languages (e.g., Chinese, Turkish, Spanish). I investigate biological effects via studies of children with a neurodevelopmental disorder called Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). I frequently rely on a method called Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL), which reveals fine details of young children's language comprehension. I am beginning research to link up children's language processing and neural structure and function.

Research Interests:

We study the neural circuits in the auditory system and the changes in the brain imposed by tinnitus and hearing loss. The CNS reacts to changes in the ear, and this leads to plastic changes in the central auditory system. Understanding these plastic changes is a key to providing new therapy. Recently, we have discovered neurons that fire for minutes after the offset of a long duration sound. This unusual form of plasticity may be related to tinnitus and the perception of a phantom sound.

Research Interests:

My lab is investigating the hypothesis that the well-recognized 4:1 male bias in Autism Spectrum Disorder may be due to parent-specific epigenetic signatures on the X chromosome. We were the first to identify parent-specific gene expression, a.k.a genomic imprinting on the X chromosome in mice, and have focused recent efforts on understanding the mechanism of imprinting of these genes, their function during neurodevelopment, and the potential for misregulation of the human orthologs of these genes.

Research Interests:

The development of genome-scale sequence data and novel next generation sequencing (NGS) applications has provided a foundation for studying biological processes in targeted species; in my lab, we capitalize on using NGS approaches and chromosomics to compare the genomes of different species and different genomes across human disease states, affording a greater understanding of genome evolution and the functional elements dispersed among coding and non-coding regions.

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Research Interests:

The major focus of my lab is the role(s) of the CNS barriers, e.g., blood-brain barrier and blood-CSF barrier, in physiology and pathophysiology.
As these barriers are fundamental to maintaining CNS homeostasis, even subtle disruptions in their function can lead to marked neurobiolological and cognitive changes. CNS barriers are also a main regulator of drug delivery, and so are major determinants in the efficacy and toxicity of drug action in the brain.

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Research Interests:

I take a data-rich approach to capture the many ways in which our language, movement, decisions, and emotions change during social contact in laboratory and real-world settings. Understanding how conversational goals, social connections, and physical spaces shape our emerging behaviors is a primary goal of my research, embedded within rich traditions of dynamical and ecological perspectives. Recently, I have also become interested in exploring social behaviors in non-human systems.

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Research Interests:

As author of interpersonal acceptance-rejection theory, my research for past six decades focused on the effects, causes, and correlates of interpersonal acceptance-rejection. Included in this this work is an interest in the neurobiological and genetic substrates underlying universal response-tendencies to the experience of interpersonal rejection by significant others. In particular, I am interested in the neural correlates of adults’ remembrances of parental acceptance-rejection in childhood.

Research Interests:

I use behavioral methods, neuroimaging, and computational modeling to study reading and reading acquisition. I study individual differences within and across language populations and typical and atypical development to understand how the organization of the reading system is shaped by the properties of the writing system. I am also interested in the role of domain-general learning and memory mechanisms (e.g. declarative and procedural memory, statistical learning) in reading acquisition.

Research Interests:

I study the development of self-control from birth through early adulthood. Many of my research experiences with infancy and early childhood samples demonstrates that the executive function skills used to regulate parent-infant interactions are teachable, and that improving parent self-regulation is a skill set that serves to support positive parent-child interactions throughout childhood. Given the importance of self control for group learning contexts and its significant enduring associations with adaptive outcomes into adulthood, elaborating on the contributing factors to children’s self control is warranted. Later in the lifespan, research on youth engaged in risk behaviors suggests that emotion regulation is a key outcome which fosters youths’ capacities to face contextual/social and biological challenges and respond to obstacles in adaptive rather than maladaptive ways. Such contextual/social and biological challenges include peer influence and parents’ history of substance use, as well as adolescent impulsivity and poor distress tolerance -- these are each significantly associated with adolescent substance use. Much of my research focuses with these older samples on risk trajectories for adolescent substance use, in particular examining impulsivity and inhibitory control as outcomes from a range of recovery programs.

Research Interests:

My laboratory develops modeling and analysis tools to understand the effects of neural disorders on the brain’s electrophysiology, from single units to neural populations. We also focus on designing control algorithms for adaptive, robust, optimal neural prostheses, with application to Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, deep brain stimulation, and brain-computer interface. One ongoing project aims to develop algorithms for automatic localization of the epileptogenic onset zone and seizure onset detection in drug-resistant epileptic patients. Another ongoing project aims to understand the role of stimulation-elicited resonant effects in the motor striatum in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

Research Interests:

My research is focused on maximizing our ability to accurately diagnose specific language impairment in early childhood in order to provide early and optimal interventions to remediate the deficits that children with language impairment encounter. My secondary line of
investigation is focused on understanding the cognitive difficulties associated with specific language impairment in order to improve our theoretical understanding of the nature of this disorder and to determine how such deficits impede the language learning process.

Research Interests:

My long term research goals focus on understanding how information is represented and processed in the brain - both at the level of individual neurons as well as the nervous system as a whole. In collaboration with electrophysiologists, my lab uses and develops machine learning methods to understand how populations of neurons interact and adapt, and, using behavioral experiments, we develop probabilistic models of human perception and behavior. Our current research and immediate plans revolve around two broad themes: 1) modeling neural dynamics, interactions, and adaptation and, 2) linking neural data with perception, behavior, and learning. These modeling efforts should ultimately allow us to move beyond traditional stimulus-response models of single neurons and, instead, characterize how neural interactions and dynamics give rise to network activity and behavior.

Research Interests:

Humans seem to work best when they balance their need for order with their need for wildness. I've come to this via the study of language structure (theory of syntax), on the one hand, and language change (grammaticalization) and processing (psycholinguistics), on the other. These days, I'm also studying group coordination. I try to clarify ideas via mathematics and modeling at the intersection of the theory of computation and dynamical systems (e.g., neural networks).

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Research Interests:

Our research examines the perceptual mechanisms that support language comprehension. We focus on the degree to which language comprehension is shaped by input in the environment, both with respect to perceptual learning in end-state representations as well as plasticity underlying acquisition of speech sound categories in development. We consider these questions using a variety of experimental paradigms including behavioral psychophysics, fMRI, EEG, and computational methods.

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Research Interests:

My interest is to reveal the mechanisms by which ion channels and associated molecules and signaling networks control excitability in the neonatal and infantile brain. My lab addresses this question using a multidisciplinary approach that combines electrophysiology, pharmacology and microscopy in genetically modified mice lines that we have developed. Much of my work has dissected the cell-type and brain-region specific effects that potassium channel genes have on neuronal physiology. Going forward, I will continue to study the role of ion channels, expanding my research into their role in controlling neuronal firing rates at the single and population level.

Research Interests:

My primary research interest is 'phonology', the study of the form of language, both in terms of its physical manifestations and in terms of its underlying mental representations. As such, I formulate and test theories about phonological representations and derivations. This also involves the interfaces between phonology and other components of the grammar (morphology, syntax, semantics and phonetics). I work on the phonology of spoken languages and on the 'phonology' of sign languages, taking a special interest in parallels and differences between these two modalities. Secondary interests are the history of linguistics (specifically phonology), language acquisition (the interplay between environmental input and innate abilities), the evolution of the human mind and language (specifically of phonology) and the expression of meaning through other visual channels such as gesture and (sequential) drawing.

Research Interests:

My research investigates the memory system that supports language comprehension, with special focus on individual differences. My approach represents a paradigm shift: rather than focusing on memory capacity as a source of difficulty, I focus on the efficiency of the retrieval mechanism. A related goal is to fully specify the cognitive architecture for language processing, including the mechanisms and time course through which needed information is brought in and out of the focus of attention.

Research in my lab aims to characterize factors that limit the ability to retrieve linguistic information from memory, especially interference, decay, quality of lexical representations, and cognitive control. We investigate these issues in diverse populations, including skilled and unskilled readers, dyslexics, Specific Language Impairment, and aging adults, utilizing a clinical approach which includes extensive assessments of cognitive and linguistic ability. Primary experimental methods include the speed-accuracy tradeoff procedure, which provides detailed data about the dynamics of information retrieval, and eye-movement measures during reading, which identify both the time-course and location of processing difficulties. More recent work incorporates fMRI and ERP methods to reveal the neurological bases of these processes.

Research Interests:

My research interests are to study of stroke pathophysiology primarily from a pharmacological treatment and post-stroke recovery perspective in a rodent model of ischemic focal cerebral ischemia. Besides that, I am interested in understanding the impact of neuro-immune and growth factors component in post-stroke behavioral recovery. Recently, we began to explore the role of purinergic receptor P2X4, a ligand-gated ion channel, in ischemic stroke owing to their critical role in immunomodulation.

Research Interests:

My research is concerned with the grammar-parser relation: it tries to elucidate the mechanisms at play during real-time computations, and to determine whether the grammar and the parser should be conceived of as two separate systems or as two facets of the same cognitive system. I tackle this issue mostly through the lens of ungrammatical sentences using several experimental methods (e.g. acceptability judgments, self-paced reading, and (in collaboration) EEG and computational modelling).

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Research Interests:

My research interests span developmental, educational, and clinical fields. My work explores how language and cognitive abilities influence children’s development. I currently investigate the effect language has on numerical cognition under the Study of Language and Math. As a prospective clinician and interdisciplinary researcher, I am motivated to improve educational and clinical interventions, specifically for children who are deaf and/or have autism spectrum disorder.

Research Interests:

My interests include ritual, cooperation, and the interaction between cognition and culture. My research focuses on the application of scientific methods and technologies in ethnographic field research. I have conducted several years of fieldwork in Southern Europe and Mauritius. Before coming to UConn, I held positions at the universities of Princeton, Aarhus, and Masaryk, where I served as Director of the Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion (LEVYNA). I currently hold a joint position between Aarhus University and the University of Connecticut, where I am directing the Experimental Anthropology Lab.

Research Interests:

My research focuses on the statistical learning of time-dependent data. I am currently working on (i) nonasymptotic statistical learning and (ii) high dimensional time series analysis. The objective of (i) is to develop methods that work well even when the sample size is very small, which usually cannot be achieved by conventional asymptotic tools. The objective of (ii) is to develop efficient and robust inference tools for data exhibiting both cross-sectional and time dependencies.

Music

Stefanie Acevedo

Research Interests:

Psychological Sciences

Gerry Altmann

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Neuroscience, UConn Health

Srdjan Antic

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Psychological Sciences

Robert Astur

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Neuroscience

Byoung Il Bae

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Statistics

Haim Bar

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Philosophy

Dorit Bar-On

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Communication

Saraswathi Bellur

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Psychological Sciences

Yulia Bereshpolova

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Physiology & Neurobiology

Angel de Blas

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Haskins Laboratories

David Braze

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Human Development & Family Sciences

Alaina Brenick

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Human Development & Family Sciences

Preston Britner

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Biomedical Engineering

Kevin Brown

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Neuroscience

Alice Burghard

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Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences

Lindsay Butler

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Nursing

Postdoctoral Researcher

Sharon Casavant

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Sociology

Noel Cazenave

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Psychological Sciences

Chi-Ming Chen

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Statistics

Ming-Hui Chen

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Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Yongku Cho

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Psychological Sciences

James Chrobak

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Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences

Carl Coelho

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Physiology & Neurobiology

Joanne Conover

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Psychological Sciences

Marie Coppola

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Genetics & Genome Sciences, UConn Health

Justin Cotney

Research Interests:

Neuroscience, UConn Health