ResearchProjects

Explore our lab's ongoing projects and research initiatives in neuroscience and education.

Current Research

Active Research Projects

Explore our ongoing research initiatives and collaborative projects that are pushing the boundaries of neuroscience and educational research.

Nothing gets planned or decided without cognition - the symbolic representation of the neocortex, our crowning neuro-evolutionary accomplishment as a species. But we also know that direct experiences, like internships, undergraduate research, study abroad, community service, provide a powerful emotional or gut-level complement to a college student’s cognitive planning. That cognitive-emotional integration is represented in the cortex as a "value network" of brain areas. Recently, we have posted servaral long blogs on how the cortex manages this symbolic representation and where in the frontal cortex that limbic re-representation might occur to support the value network. Now is the time to focus on what happens in individual neocortical areas without losing sight of the brain networks that connect them.

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Brandy Eggan

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Kassie von Stein

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Vanessa NyBlom

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Jenay Bartlett

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Onoseta Momodu

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Rachel Orenstein

Started: Ongoing
6 Team Members

We are not clinical psychologists, but if one is interested in cognitive-emotional integration (and we are) it is necessary to look at this phenomenon in clinical situations. That is what this group does. In a recent series of blogs, we wrote about "clinical insight" where executive (cortical) function was able to override anxiety such as in a case of PTSD, perhaps through a connecting brain pathway. Now, we are working on other illustrative syndromes where we feel we can see this cognitive-emotional integration happening in the brain and continue to look for insights in to non-clinical situations like college students deciding between majors/career paths.

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Natalia Baron

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Sophia DiLavore

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Rachel Dolowich

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Kathleen Larsen

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Mecca Brooks

Started: Ongoing
5 Team Members

How can teaching in introductory psychology be conducted in a way that promotes active student learning and engagement? We use a concept-based teaching approach with open-book essay tests. In a Tuesday/Thursday hybrid teaching format, concepts are first introduced by each week by a short video and a brief on-line quiz on Monday before the Tuesday in-person lecture/discussion where detailed facts and theories are presented. Then, on Thursday we use a Zoom meeting format that starts with a brief review and then features discussion in Zoom groups with report-out to the whole class. The idea is to practice there some active discussion and active learning. Like others, we have been impacted by Artificial Intelligence (AI). So we are experimenting with having the Monday quizzes be answered in oral conversation with an Ai-driven avatars (in collaboration with InStage Inc. (with whom we have written papers). We are also encouraging Zoom groups on Thursday to use ChatGpt to develop their answers to questions that are then evaluated by those Zoon groups in their class discussion. Finally, we feature short in-class videos of mindfulness and growth mindset. The overall goal is to emulate the engagement of experiential education based on the neuroscience of cognitive-emotional integration.

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Arun Venkitanarayanan

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Madeline Martin

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Georgina Breihof

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Agata (Buras) Greco

Started: Ongoing
4 Team Members

Relevant direct experiences, like internships, can compliment a student's a major, and can contribute to the development of maturity, insight, and even the beginning of professional wisdom in that student. To get a better handle on what college students think is wisdom, we did a survey that is in a blog. Brandy and Jim, with help from Rachel and Vanessa are writing a book that we hope to submit to a publisher in the Fall of 2024. Then this group might change or collapse into other groups. Books are the ultimate output of many blogs and that was what happened in the two books listed on our main lab web page.

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Brandy Eggan

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Nina Pluviose

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Noor Ahmed

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Brandon Ascencio

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Rachel Orenstein

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Vanessa NyBlom

Started: Ongoing
6 Team Members

Sympathetic Intelligence is a group that is working with an emerging Center for Sympathetic Intelligence (see our affiliation lab web page). That center focuses on interactions between people, the establishment of connection, and the development of collective caring. In this context diversity, social media, the structure of organizations are studied with regard to cognition. An emerging area is trauma and resiliance led by some members here and several blog writers outside the lab (yes there are many)

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Andrew Keating

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Zuri Steadman

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Pat Gareau

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Natalie Seow

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Brandy Eggan

Started: Ongoing
5 Team Members

The lab not only produces blogs as a general way to develop ideas for later larger works (e.g. chapters and books), but it produces podcasts with thought-leaders in the field of cooperative education or work-integrated education and entities and agencies that promote this work. This work complements the blogs and is featured on our home page and under the ExperienED tab on the lab web page. Adrienne is the longest continuous member of the lab having written our first student blog in 2009, helped edit Stellars 2017 book. She works with Mary Churchill on the podcast who is now interm Dean of the Wheelock College of Education.

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Adrienne Dooley

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Dr. James Stellar

Started: Ongoing
2 Team Members
Our Philosophy

Core Research Values

Our lab's foundational principles guide our research and shape our approach to understanding the intersection of neuroscience and education.

The Experiential Development of Professional Wisdom

Student development of "so-called" soft-skills, professional knowledge, entrepreneurship, and even wisdom through experiential education is seen as a natural progression with age and with experiential activities. This project examines how learning from experience in conjunction with a strong academic curriculum can develop expertise in a skill and thinking area. Knowing the modern view of neuroplasticity, it also looks at factors such as engagement that produce brain and behavioral changes. Knowing modern neuroscience, it looks at cognitive-emotional integration as below.

Cognitive-Emotional Brain Circuit Integration and Reflection

Reflection facilitates the integration of emotion with cognition in producing student maturity from experiential education. While focused on the neuroscience of brain areas and networks from brain scanner studies, this project also learns from other fields such as art/music, social psychology/sociology, philosophy, etc. A particular interest is in the two-way communication between unconscious (mammalian brain) and conscious (primate brain) decision-making brain circuits and its enhancement over time. We also are interested in parallels to mindfulness and growth mindset practices.

Diversity and inclusion

Using experiential education thinking to promote students taking agency in working with diverse groups of college students for a diverse world is the focus of this project. Several members of the lab recently produced a book on this topic, using student and alumni stories to illustrate basic social neuroscience principles of relevant unconscious decision-making. There is no question that diversity/inclusion generally is a compelling issue of our time inside and outside of the college experience and is an ongoing interest of the lab.

Evolution Timeline

Journey Through Brain Evolution

Discover how millions of years of evolution shaped the triune brain model and revolutionized our understanding of learning and cognition.

Evolution Timeline

500 MYA
Early Vertebrates
200 MYA
Early Mammals
65 MYA
Primate Evolution
1960s
Modern Discovery
500 MYAEarly Vertebrates

The Reptilian Foundation

The emergence of the brainstem and basic survival circuits. This ancient brain controlled breathing, heart rate, and fundamental survival instincts.

Key Discoveries & Features

Basic motor control systems
Autonomic nervous system
Fight-or-flight responses
Territorial behaviors

Educational Significance

Established the foundation for all higher brain functions

Evolution Progress

Reptilian BrainPaleomammalianNeomammalianModern Understanding
Interactive Exploration

The Triune Brain Model

Explore the three evolutionary layers of the brain and how they interact to influence learning, decision-making, and experiential education outcomes.

NeomammalianPaleomammalianReptilian

Neomammilian Layer

The crowning achievement of evolution is the development of the 6 layer neocortex that houses

our ability to perceive, act, and reason with a high degree of cognitive abstraction. Sitting

at the highest level of brain function, it exercises the power of speech and handles the facts

and theory learning seen in higher education. Research also indicates that it tends to perceive

itself as the source of all awareness often ignoring the functioning of lower brain systems

that our defining quote from Pascale calls “heart reasons.”

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