The lab's research focuses on understanding basic psychological and brain mechanisms of memory and emotion using a combination of techniques including: functional MRI, study of patients with focal brain lesions of the medial temporal lobe (hippocampus and amygdala), cognitive tasks, psychophysiology, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and through a collaborative multisite project with lab alum Dr. Cory Inman at University of Utah, deep brain stimulation of the amygdala. Recent projects in the lab have focused on understanding the neural organization of emotion, how emotional memory is forgotten differently from non-emotional memory, effects of amygdala lesions on emotional responses, and how brain networks support the dynamic reactivation of autobiographical memory retrieval content. Although our focus is on understanding basic mechanisms, the area of emotional memory has overlap with clinical psychology, and some lab alums have gone on to do work in clinical neuroscience, such as Jennifer Stevens at the Grady Trauma Project.

Our interests include...

• Neural correlates of autobiographical and emotional memory
• Emotion and memory in patients with focal medial temporal lobe lesions
• Neural basis of human emotion
• Eye-tracking and pupilometric studies of emotion, attention, and memory
• Sex differences in emotion and emotional memory
• Emotional effects of deep brain stimulation​