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Former Lab Members
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| Jenny Richmond Ph.D |
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I am a post doc in the lab and joined the Nelson lab a year ago after graduating with my PhD in Psychology from the University of Otago in New Zealand. My research investigates how brain development contributes to memory development during infancy. Much of my thesis work focused on visual paired-comparison (VPC) performance in adults and the interpretation of novelty and null preferences. I am excited to continue this work on the McDonnell project, using ERPs and eye tracking to look at the neural basis of visual preferences in infants. In addition, I am interested in the neural basis of age-related changes in memory flexibility and the role that context plays in infants memory retrieval.
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| Margaret Mouson Ph.D |
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I had the privilege of spending four years in the Nelson lab as a graduate student, and received my PhD from the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota in August, 2007. I am currently a postdoctoral associate in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and continue to collaborate with Dr. Nelson and other lab members on a variety of projects. I am primarily interested in the development of social perception in infancy; much of my research focuses on the development of face perception and the role that early experiences play in shaping face processing skills over the course of development. I use both behavioral and electrophysiological (e.g., ERP) methods to investigate questions in this area.
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| Maria Fusaro |
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I am a doctoral student at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, and joined the lab to learn more about brain-based approaches to the study of cognitive development. I received a B.A. in Education (Human Development) from Brown University, and an M.A. in Mind, Brain, and Education from Harvard's Education School. My research interests are in the development of social-cognitive skills, from infancy through the preschool years.
Using behavioral and electrophysiological techniques, I am examining how non-verbal cues of agreement and disagreement (e.g., head nodding and
shaking) shape the way children process information. Four-year-olds are eligible to participate in this study of the neural correlates of non-verbal cue processing.
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| Katherine Hung |
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I received my bachelor's degree in Brain and Cognitive Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006 and am currently working as a research study assistant in Dr. Nelson's lab. My research will be focused on studying the role of early experience in face processing. More specifically, we will be examining the course of perceptual narrowing in infants and the effects of training and experience on development. Furthermore, we are interested in determining the breadth of the perceptual window by examining discrimination of various categories of faces such as species, gender, and age.
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| Joseph McCleery, Ph.D. |
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I received a B.A. in Psychology from Rutgers University, Camden, and both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, San Diego. My primary research interest is to elucidate the neural and behavioral mechanisms that underlie both typical and atypical social-emotional and social-communicative development. Much of my research has focused on young children who have been diagnosed with autism, as well as infants who are at high risk for developing autism. One of the long-term goals of this research is to use the information gathered from a neuroscience perspective to develop interventions for infants and children who are at risk for social-emotional and social-communicative difficulties. I joined Dr. Nelson's laboratory in June of 2007, with support from the Cure Autism Now Foundation to conduct research on the relationship between atypical face processing and social-emotional functioning in young children with autism.
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| Kristin Shutts, Ph.D. |
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I joined the Nelson lab as a post-doctoral fellow in September 2006 after receiving my Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Harvard University in 2006. My main line of research concerns the development of social cognition, in particular how infants and children come to think of themselves and others members of different social categories ( e.g., gender, race, age), and how this changes over the course of development. To study these questions, I use a combination of behavioral, psychophysiological (e.g., heart rate), and neuroscience (e.g., ERP) methods.
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| Anne Rifkin, Ph.D. |
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I received a B.A. in psychology from Georgetown University, and an M.A. and Ph.D in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. I am primarily interested in the impact of non-optimal-but not necessarily extreme-experience on the brain. In my dissertation I examined the impact of subtle differences in early relationships with parents on subtle changes in stress hormones (i.e., cortisol) and cognitive functions known to be impacted by stress (e.g., memory and executive functioning). As a post-doc in the Nelson laboratory, and in collaboration with researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, I have broadened my research interests to also consider the effects of other individual differences and corresponding fluctuations in hormones on these same cognitive functions. Using ERP and behavioral techniques, I am currently investigating the role of leptin, a hormone that varies by body fat and nutrition, on memory and executive function.
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| Jelena Spasovic |
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I obtained my B.A. in psychology from Mount Holyoke College, where I developed a strong interest in clinical and developmental child psychology. I was privileged to become a member of the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience in December 2007. I am currently involved in two research studies that are designed to investigate emotional reactivity and regulation in infants and preschool-aged children. Specifically, the aim of the studies are to ascertain whether children who are at increased risk for developing anxiety difficulties process emotional expressions differently from children who are at low risk for anxiety difficulties.
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