2009 Lab Members

I am Associate Professor of Gerontology, Psychology and the Neuroscience Graduate Program here at USC. My research focuses on how emotion and stress affect memory and decisions, and how these processes change as we age. CV email

I joined the Mather lab after graduating from the University of Tokyo. My dissertation research focused on the effects of affect on recall of autobiographical memories. I am currently interested in the effects of affect on cognitive processes more broadly. I am working on projects investigating facilitative and inhibitory impacts of affect on problem solving, attention and memory encoding, obtaining complementary evidence from behavioral methods and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). email website

My research integrates perspectives from gerontology, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience in order to understand how stress impacts cognitive processing across the lifespan and how these stress effects are modulated by sex. Specifically, my studies examine how acute stress affects decision making about risk and reward by measuring stress and sex hormones, physiological arousal, behavior and brain activation in men and women in early and late adulthood. email website

My research focus is on emotion-memory interactions, emotion-related learning, and decision-making in older adults and individuals with Alzheimer Disease (AD). I am currently examining what AD individuals can do using their remaining skills, such as the ability to process emotional information, and how to utilize these skills for effective communication and learning. email

I am a PhD student in the Brain and Cognitive Science concentration in the Psychology department here at USC. Understanding how emotions influence perception and memory for visual experiences encompasses most of my research interests. I am currently exploring how emotional arousal influences memory binding for kinetic features of visual scenes. How individuals perceive and organize visual information containing emotionally arousing content, and how this information binds together in memory reveals much about the functional architecture of the human memory system and the utility of human emotions. email

I am the Mather Lab Manager; I joined the Mather Lab in 2008 with a B.S. in Bioengineering (Neural and Sensory systems core) from UC Berkeley. I'm interested in research looking at brain activity under various conditions using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). email

I graduated from UCSD with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology with a concentration in Cognitive Neuropsychology. I served as an undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Aron's lab investigating the neural underpinnings of response inhibition and the effects of emotion on cognitive processing speed. I am interested in the neurobiology of learning and memory and changes that occur in these processes in aging and neurodegenerative disease. email

I studied Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrueck, Germany; my bachelor's thesis was about the 'Influence of Color in Object-Scene Recognition.' I also conducted research about the influence of emotions on perception and decision making. My main research interest is how high and low level perception are influenced by emotions. email

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• USC Davis School
• USC Psychology
• USC Neuroscience