MEET THE TEAM
Principal Investigator
Postdoctoral Fellows
Graduate Students
Lab Manager
Research Assistants
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Morgan Biele is a sophomore intending to major in Neuroscience and is interested in the medical humanities. She is interested in studying how memory and imagination can influence outlook and the way people experience the world around them as positive or negative.
Aisha Greene is a junior majoring in Neuroscience with minors in Chemistry and biology. She is interested in studying how instances affect counterfactual thinking, how counterfactual thinking helps us understand memory more broadly, and how this may affect our present mental health.
Angela Huang is a freshman who is a prospective Program II major studying mental illness and its implication in society. In the IMC Lab, she is interested in learning how memory and imagination contributes to emotional regulation and mental health.
Nathan Liang is a senior majoring in Psychology and double-minoring in Philosophy and Neuroscience. He is interested in studying social cognition and the cognitive neuroscience of morality and emotion.
Sarah LoCurto is a sophomore double-majoring in Neuroscience and Philosophy. She is broadly interested in cognitive neuroscience, moral philosophy, and their intersection, particularly in the context of emotions and mental health.
Akshaj Turebylu is a second-year undergraduate at Duke University planning on majoring in English. His research interests include neuroaesthetics, religious experience, and imagination. His hometown is Coppell, Texas where he found his love of jazz and rock music.
Collaborators
past and present
Donna Rose Addis, Rotman Research Institute
Tim Brady, University of California, San Diego
Paul Bello, US Naval Research Laboratory
Roberto Cabeza, Duke University
Simon Davis, Duke University
Kelly S. Giovanello, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Sangeet Khemlani, US Naval Research Laboratory
Joshua Knobe, Yale University
Kevin LaBar, Duke University
Kourken Michaelian, Université Grenoble Alpes
John Pearson, Duke University
Sarah Robins, University of Kansas
Zach Rosenthal, Duke University
Daniel L. Schacter, Harvard University
Paul Seli, Duke University
R. Nathan Spreng, McGill University
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Duke University
Peggy L. St. Jacques, University of Alberta
Nina Strohminger, University of Pennsylvania
Karl K. Szpunar, University of Illinois, Chicago
Marty Woldorff, Duke University
Kristina earned a B.A. in Psychology and English from Duke University and went on to earn her Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. Kristina studies how attention — and distraction — affect visual perception, memory, and the culminating attribution of causal judgements. She is currently using behavioral, eye tracking, and neuroimaging techniques for a multidimensional view. Kristina is also interested in exploring how her research interfaces with philosophical concepts regarding responsibility and moral agency.
Samuel earned a B.A. in Philosophy from Wake Forest University and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. His work focuses on the psychology of acting over time and how vigilance interacts with attention, memory, and control to facilitate temporally extended agency. Additionally, he works on normative questions of moral responsibility — especially responsibility for negligence — and has an abiding interest in the history of early modern philosophy.
Visiting Fellow
Trey earned a B.A. in Philosophy from Lewis & College Clark, an M.A. in Philosophy from Simon Fraser University, and a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on explanation and causal inference in neuroscience, with specific interest in how the robustness of neural functions presents challenges for standard approaches to causal inference in biological systems. Trey also has active interests in philosophy of perception related to attention and vagueness in perceptual representation.
Fuchsberg-Levine Family Associate Professor of Philosophy
Associate Professor, Psychology and Neuroscience
Core Faculty, Duke Institute for Brain Sciences & Center for Cognitive Neuroscience
Felipe earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Colombia, where he studied philosophy and neuropsychology. He earned a masters degree from Tufts University, where he studied philosophy and cognitive science under the direction of Daniel Dennett. Then, he earned a doctoral degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he studied philosophy and cognitive neuroscience under the direction of Jesse Prinz and Kelly Giovanello, respectively. Before coming to Duke, he spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow in Daniel Schacter's Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory Lab at Harvard University. With Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, he launched the Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy that have been hosted every year at Duke since 2016.
Leonard Faul
Leonard received a B.S. in Psychology and Biology from the University of Louisville in 2017, where he also worked as a research assistant in the Neuroimaging Laboratory of Cognitive, Affective, and Motoric Processes. He joined the lab through the Cognitive Neuroscience Admitting Program, and currently works with Kevin LaBar and Felipe De Brigard to investigate the interaction of emotional experiences with memory consolidation and modification.
Kevin is a PhD student who joined the lab through the Cognitive Neuroscience Admitting Program. He received a B.S. in Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he worked in the Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning (RAIR) Lab, and later worked as a computer scientist at the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). Currently, Kevin is working with Felipe De Brigard, John Pearson, and NRL to investigate how the brain coordinates cognitive processes (e.g., attention, perception, and memory) to support inference and reasoning in a variety of domains.
Shenyang Huang
Shenyang joined the lab in 2018 as an undergraduate research assistant. He received a B.S. in Neuroscience and Mathematics from Duke University in 2020. He is now a first-year PhD student in the Cognitive Neuroscience Admitting Program, and he is interested in investigating how the functional networks of the brain support declarative memory and moral reasoning.
Anna Smith
Anna is a second year Psychology & Neuroscience Ph.D. student working with Paul Seli and Felipe De Brigard. After receiving her B.A. in Cognitive Science from Carleton College, Anna spent two years working with Dr. Michael Yassa on studies of episodic memory mechanisms and performance trajectories associated with healthy and disordered aging. She hopes to tie in her previous work on the nature of episodic and semantic representations, her love for interdisciplinary science, and a personal drive to create and consume art, to pursue a body of research that illuminates stages and conditions of the creative process. Anna also serves as Co-director and Instructor for Duke Neurosciences Camp, a residential summer camp for high schoolers.
Matthew earned a B.S. in Psychology and a B.A. in Philosophy from Wake Forest University. He joined the lab through the Cognitive Neuroscience Admitting Program and is currently a PhD student in Psychology & Neuroscience. He works with Roberto Cabeza, Felipe De Brigard, Elizabeth Marsh, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong to answer questions involving memory, morality, truth, and reasons from computational, behavioral, and philosophical perspectives.
Brenda earned a B.S. and B.A. in Neuroscience and Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Southern California. Then, she worked as a high school science educator in northeast Los Angeles through Teach for America before entering graduate school. Now she is a PhD student in Psychology & Neuroscience who entered through the Cognitive Neuroscience Admitting Program. She works with Elizabeth Marsh and Felipe De Brigard to study questions relating to imagining, belief, and education.
Maria earned a B.S. in Psychology and Philosophy from Boston College, where they worked in Maureen Ritchey's Memory Modulation Lab. Now, they manage the IMC Lab and coordinate the Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy. They are interested in confidence & metacognition, interactions among memory, attention, and perception, and philosophy of neuroscience.
