Summer intern, Oscar Lassera, presented his research at the Summer Undergraduate Pipeline (SUP) Research Symposium. Oscar was supported by the SMART program, which provides STEM research opportunities to students from underrepresented backgrounds and/or to UNC transfer students. Oscar worked with graduate student Joseph Leshin to analyze fMRI data from our NSF-Funded Advancing a Situated Neuroscience of Emotion project. He found that across both sadness and fear, amygdala activity was best predicted by dimensions of threat acuteness and ambiguity. We’ll be sharing the preprint on our Publications page!

Oscar Lassera presents his analyses on the role of appraisals on amygdala activation