The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds

Drew Fox

Graduate Student

Drew is interested in the way that emotional and empathetic brain systems influence decision-making and pro-social behaviors. During his graduate work, he plans to use functional brain imaging in both humans and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), to investigate how these interactions occur. Eventually, he hopes his research leads to novel ways of triggering these brain systems to produce positive behavioral outcomes.

Aaron Heller

Graduate Student - Clinical

Aaron’s 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, he plans 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.

Daniel Levinson

Graduate Student – Clinical (Fetzer Fellow)

Daniel is 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 to excel at these behaviors, and how these processes may be facilitated.

2008 Fetzer Institute Fellowship, Fetzer Initiative on the Neuroscience of Love, Compassion, and Forgiveness

Sharee Light

Graduate Student - Clinical

Sharee's 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 contentment as distinct types of positive emotion. Her interest in studying the neural bases of contentment and pleasure comes from her 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 for poster entitled "Reduced activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex during the regulation of positive affect is a neural marker of anhedonia.”; 2009 Ford Dissertation Fellowship Honorable Mention; 2010 Advanced Opportunity Fellowship (National Science Foundation); 2010 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory workshop on "Biology of Social Cognition" scholarship.

David Perlman

Graduate Student - IGM

Fun with Dave's head

David comes from a background in physics, computers and statistics. He is currently working on functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of the effects of meditation on pain perception, as well as on altruistic behavior and reward circuitry using neuroeconomics methodologies. He has also worked on real-time fMRI neurofeedback.

Other ongoing projects include work with cognitive models of depression and anxiety, combined with pain affect; thermal imaging of particular advanced yoga practices; and various methodological and instrumentation developments. Eventually he hopes to study effects of abstract beliefs and cognitive styles on emotion and psychopathology, and the role of societal factors in this process.

2009 Fetzer Institute Fellowship, Fetzer Initiative on the Neuroscience of Love, Compassion, and Forgiveness

Brianna Schuyler

Graduate Student - NTP

Brianna’s work has focused on ways to analyze connectivity between brain regions in functional MRI data. Currently she is using these methods to look at connectivity between specific regions of the brain during the regulation of negative emotion. She is also researching the neural and behavioral correlates of forgiveness.

2009 Fetzer Institute Fellowship, Fetzer Initiative on the Neuroscience of Love, Compassion, and Forgiveness

Helen Weng

Graduate Student – Clinical (Fetzer Fellow)

Helen’s main research interest is how to most effectively regulate both negative and positive emotion that leads to increased personal well-being as well as altruistic behavior towards others. She studies meditation as a set of practices that may increase effective emotion regulation. She is also interested in how meditation may help to alleviate and maintain remission from mood and anxiety disorders.

Her current research involves studying compassion meditation as an alternate form of emotion regulation compared to cognitive reappraisal using fMRI and economic behavioral measures. She is collaborating with Drew Fox to develop an economic decision-making task that will be sensitive to compassion training. She is 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: 2007 Francisco J. Varela Memorial Grant Award; 2007 Hertz Foundation Research Fellowship Award; 2007 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mention; 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).