Cognitive Neuroscience
(Brain & Cognition Division)
Program Description
The Cognitive Neuroscience division offers a comprehensive program encompassing both human and animal approaches to questions about functional organization and neural architecture of cognition. Specific areas of faculty interest include memory, attention and performance, aging, language, emotion, and the development and refinement of brain imaging methods. The research of the faculty in this division makes use of a vast array of methods, including functional and structural MRI, psychophysiological recordings (e.g., ERP, MEG), eye-tracking, neuropsychological testing, and optical readings (EROS and NIRS)in humans, as well as single unit recording, and pharmacological and lesion preparations in animals.
Because of the highly collaborative nature of the work of members of this division and the hands-on methodological training offered, students in the program have exposure to, and are encouraged to gain direct experience with, a number of these methods. This program is strongly research oriented. Each student works directly with a faculty adviser on original research from the onset of his/her graduate career, including the conducting of a first-year project.
Cognitive Neuroscience Faculty
Diane M. Beck, Associate Professor
Cognitive and neural mechanisms of visual attention, awareness, and perception.
Office: Room 531 | (217) 244-1118 | dmbeck@illinois.edu
Neal J. Cohen, Professor and Head of the Neuroscience Program
Interdisciplinary, cognitive neuroscience study of human learning and memory, with a focus on identifying and characterizing the brain's multiple memory systems, particularly the hippocampal system, through the study of amnesia.
Office: Room Beckman 2165 | (217) 244-4339 | njc@illinois.edu
Florin Dolcos, assistant Professor
Neural correlates of affective-cognitive interactions in healthy and clinical populations. We use brain imaging methods (fMRI, ERP) in conjunction with behavioral (cognitive and neuropsychological tasks, personality questionnaires) and other psychophysiological measurements (skin conductance).
Office: Room Beckman 2057 | (217) 244-4120 | fdolcos@uiuc.edu
Monica Fabiani, Professor
Memory; cognition and aging; neuroimaging; optical imaging; cognitive neuroscience.
Office: Room 517 | (217) 244-1117 | mfabiani@illinois.edu
Kara D. Federmeier, Associate Professor
Neurobiological basis of meaning, including how world knowledge derived from multiple modalities is organized in the brain, how it is used during language comprehension, and how it is accessed and used by the two cerebral hemispheres.
Office: Room 831 | (217) 333-8303 | kfederme@illinois.edu
Susan M. Garnsey, Associate Professor & Associate Head for Graduate Affairs
Language processing; resolution of syntactic and lexical ambiguity and context effects on that resolution; the effect of prosody on disambiguation; on-line techniques for measuring language comprehension; word recognition; and language/brain relationships.
Office: Room 810 | (217) 244-1120 | sgarnsey@psych.illinois.edu
Paul E. Gold, Professor
Cellular, molecular, and systems regulation of learning, memory and neural plasticity in rodents, including in models of aging, stress, and mental retardation.
Office: Room 529 | (217) 244-0673 | pgold@illinois.edu
Brian D. Gonsalves, Assistant Professor
Functional MRI & ERP investigations of human memory.
Office: Room 530 | 244-1713 | bgon@illinois.edu
Gabriele Gratton, Professor
Gabriele Gratton's interests are in cognitive neuroscience and attention and performance.
Office: Room 519 | (217) 244-1019 | grattong@illinois.edu
Donna L Korol, Associate Professor
Neural mechanisms of learning, memory, and forgetting in rodents with an emphasis on life-span changes in modulation of synaptic plasticity by exercise and hormones.
Office: Room 525 | (217) 333-3659 | dkorol@illinois.edu