Margo is a research assistant currently studying abroad with our lab.  She is a 4^th year medical student from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands with a bachelor degree in Biomedical Sciences and in Medicine. She became interested in neuropsychiatry after working with teenagers with Pervasive Developmental Disorders.

She will focus on running subjects and analyzing DTI and HARDI data for the prosody project. While working on this project, she hopes to learn more about doing research in general and may continue working on the project once she returns home (if possible).

Assistant Professor of Psychology
Neuropsychiatry Section
Department of Psychiatry
University of Pennsylvania

Most of my work to date has focused on vocal emotion as conveyed through intonation change (prosody). I have examined vocal affect signal transmission in terms of how such signals are coded, the channels used for such coding, and the receiver’s ability to process such signals. This information theoretic approach heavily relies on gestalt principles, perception and the interaction between sensory and higher-order cognitive processes.

My research approach strives for both theoretical import and applied utility. Whenever possible I employ converging methodologies, situating methods of psychophysics and neuropsychology alongside descriptions of behavior related brain activity and brain structure using EEG or spatially sensitive MRI.

Building on this foundation, I have recently begun to focus the behavioral and neural processes involved in prosodic perception develop we mature. I recently received a career development award, which will enable me to conduct a multimodal investigation (MEG, fMRI and DWI) of prosodic processing, as well as develop and pilot social
communication tasks tailored for children and adolescents.

Research and Linguistics Professor
University of Pennsylvania

A Research and Linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, I work with Dr. Zellou on phonemic perception tasks. She received her Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research specializations include experimental acoustic and articulatory phonetics, laboratory phonology, and psycholinguistics. She has also recently accepted a faculty position at UC Davis.

Associate Professor of Psychology
University of Pennsylvania

A colleague in the Psychology Department at the University of Pennsylvania, I am working with Dr. Dahan on an upcoming project involving social collaborations in subjects with schiozophrenia and Autism Spectrum Disorders. She received her doctorate from the University of Paris La Sorbonne Rene Descartes. Her research specializations include speech comprehension and physical realization of words using eye-tracking methodology.

Lecturer in Affective Neuroscience
King’s College, London, UK

Dr. Mitchell and I are currently collaborating on a project exploring prosodic perception in bipolar disorder. Together, we presented the Prosody-Centric Neuropsychological Connectome at the 2013 International Congress of Schizophrenia Research in Orlando, FL.

As a research assistant, Krystal has a hand in many of my current projects, from initial recruitment and running subjects to data analysis and manuscript preparation. She is also responsible for the design and maintenance of this site. She is currently attending Immaculata University for her doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology. Her research interests include social functioning in disorders such as schizophrenia and Autism Spectrum Disorders. She hopes to one day translate the insight learned here to design, execute, and evaluate treatment interventions for these disorders.

As a research assistant, Chris is responsible for programming many of our current tasks in PsychoPy and creating a standalone program that will allow other research labs across the world access and run these tasks easily. His research interests started out with a curiosity about neurological disorders, specifically neurodegenerative disorders. He very much enjoys physiological psychology and any points where cognition, perception, and biology meet. For his academic senior year at Rowan University, he was part of Tom Dinzeo’s research lab at Rowan University where he was lead author of an exploratory study on the use of nicotine in schizotypy presented at an Eastern Psychological Association conference. He plans on attending medical school and focusing on neurology. He loves the research process, and his dream is to be able to conduct research and combine it with clinical practice.