Director
Thackery Brown, Ph.D.
Email: thackery.brown at psych.gatech.edu
Thackery received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Boston University under the mentorship of Dr. Chantal Stern, and completed his postdoctoral training at Stanford University with Dr. Anthony Wagner. He is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology, a member of the Center for Advanced Brain Imaging (CABI) and Georgia Tech Neuroscience, and a Network Scholar of The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Estibaliz Herrera, Ph.D.
Email: estibaliz.herrera at psych.gatech.edu
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of Psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology, and a member of the Center for Advanced Brain Imaging (CABI). My research concerns understanding the neural substrates that underlie human spatial learning and memory mechanisms. I examine how humans navigate using approaches derived from experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience in combination with functional neuroimaging (fMRI).I received my Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Leicester (UK), and prior to moving to the US as a postdoc I gained teaching experience working in Bournemouth University (UK), where I was awarded with a small grant from ARUK. I obtained an MSc in Neuroscience Research from the University of Oviedo (Spain), and I also have years of experience as a research assistant in behavioral neuroscience working with rodent models.
Research interests: I am particularly interested in better understanding which factors lead navigation strategies (egocentric and allocentric) to interact with each other or to the absence of interactions between them, as well as in characterizing their underpinning neural networks.
More broadly, I am interested in memory consolidation, visual attention, and how different cognitive abilities perform in typical and atypical populations.
Personal interests: When I am not in the lab, I enjoy hiking, traveling, lifting weights, chocolate and rock&roll.
Omar Zeid, Ph.D.
Email: ozeid3 at gatech.edu
My academic interests center around the varied ways that humans perceive and move through time and space. I earned my Ph. D in Cognitive and Neural Systems from Boston University – studying how brain circuits process sequences of motor actions and sequences of time intervals in parallel to perform rhythmic motor behaviors like singing, dancing, or playing a musical instrument. I’m currently working on a project (using computational modeling and neuroimaging results – particularly fMRI) investigating the mechanisms behind the spatial navigation of different environments for humans. As a long-time math tutor with experience teaching math and neuroscience classes, I am an advocate for increasing STEM (particularly mathematical) literacy at all levels, and I hope that tying my modeling work to concrete psychological hypotheses will go some way to justifying quantitative and qualitative mathematical analysis’s place in neuroscience and neuropsychology.
Research Interests: Systems Neuroscience, Computational Neuroscience, Mathematical Modeling, Music Perception/Cognition/Performance, Spatial Navigation, Serial Motor Action Sequencing, Motor Sequence Learning, Mathematical Perception/Cognition, Handedness
Personal Interests: Cooking/Baking, Writing Music, Watching Movies, Travel, Collecting Old Video Games, Exploring the City, Trivia, Region-Specific Styles of Pizza, Karaoke
Yiren Ren, Ph.D.
Email: yiren at gatech.edu
My research uses neuroimaging method (fMRI, EEG) to study human memory and potential uses of music in improving learning and memory. I used different methods, including univariate, multivariate (RSA, MVPA), functional connectivity, dynamic causal modeling and etc. to investigate how brain networks interact. I am particularly interested in the prefrontal-striatal-hippocampus network and its neural behaviors relating to how music-in-context provides schemas and rewards to motivate cross-modal learning.
Research interests: human episodic memory encodng, sequential memory, music therapy, music cognition
Graduate Students
Paulina Maxim
Email: paulina.maxim at gatech.edu
My research focuses on spatial navigation and schema memory across the lifespan. I am particularly interested in the hippocampal-medial prefrontal mechanisms involved in the different stages of spatial navigation and during complex memory and virtual navigation tasks. I study healthy adults ages 18-35 and 65-80 using fMRI and behavioral research methods and techniques. Currently, my team is implementing stress measures using electrical stimulation to examine the behavioral impact on memory and navigation abilities across age groups.
Research interests: memory schemas, aging, spatial navigation
Personal interests: cycling, playing bass guitar, dancing
Jaida Long
Email: jaidalong at gatech.edu
My research focuses on spatial navigation and memory organization. Specifically, I am investigating the influence of environmental geometry (ex. square or trapezoid-shaped environments) on the accuracy of spatial memory. In the future, I am aiming to examine how memories are organized broadly, from spatial to conceptual.
Research Interests: space, navigation, memory, organization, geometry
Personal Interests: fashion modeling, political organizing, Pokémon
Simin Nasiri
Email: snasiri6 at gatech.edu
Coming from architecture and computational design background, and doing my Ph.D in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, my current research area is on how environment in general, and more specifically morphology (and geometry) of space, impacts our behavior. From the behavioral standpoint, my research focus is on curiosity, memory, and the brain’s reward system. The methods and techniques includes both neural and behavioral studies using virtual reality(VR), augmented reality (AR), fMRI, and fNIRS and the statistical analysis of those data.
Research interests: spatial memory, morphology and geometry, curiosity, dopamine
Personal interests: reading, playing violin and guitar and accordion, singing, animals, cooking, drawing, watercolor
Research Assistants
Shailey Desai (sdesai330 at gatech.edu)
Anna Sterzer (asterzer3 at gatech.edu)
Lab Alumni
You can find a list of our lab alumni here
Featured Image
