Intern Oscar Lasserra presents his work on amygdala responsivity to dimensions of threat

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!

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

Dr. Kristen Lindquist edits special issue on language and emotion

Dr. Kristen Lindquist edited a special issue on language and emotion, just out in Affective Science. The issue covers topics from computational linguistics, the effects of bilingualism and acculturation on emotion/affect, the roles of language in emotion development, emotion perception, emotion regulation, and the neural representation of emotion. Read the introduction to the special issue by Dr. Lindquist here, an empirical report on the role of language as a form of context in emotion perception led by former PhD student, Dr. Cameron Doyle here, and a theoretical review on the neural intersection of language and emotion by Drs. Ajay Satpute and Kristen Lindquist here.

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Dr. Jennifer MacCormack to start as an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia

Congrats to lab graduate, Dr. Jennifer MacCormack, who accepted an Assistant Professor position in the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia! Dr. MacCormack will start her position in Fall, 2022. Dr. MacCormack is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. Follow Dr. MacCormack’s on-going work here.

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