Principal Investigator

    Joo-Hyun Song is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences and graduate student trainer in the Department of Neuroscience . She is interested in understanding the mechanisms involved in integrating higher-order cognitive processes, such as attention and decision-making, and visually-guided actions. She has addressed these questions through a combination of methodologies - including behavioral investigations, online action tracking, fMRI, EEG, and neurophysiological experiments.


    Website Email: joo-hyun_song@brown.edu

Postdoctoral Researchers

    Sean O'Bryan is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the CoPsy department. His research investigates the dynamics of selective attention in learning contexts using fMRI, eye-tracking, and modeling techniques. He is particularly interested in understanding how learning-dependent representational changes in the brain impact attention, perception, and goal-directed behavior across individuals.

    Email: sean_obryan@brown.edu
    Tri Nguyen is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the CoPsy department. His research examines the coordination among perceptual, motor, and cognitive processes from a dynamical systems perspective. He is currently investigating the contribution of motor activities and visuomotor training to perceptual discriminability and cognitive performance by combining behavioral data, time- and frequency-domain analyses of time-series data, and modelling techniques.

    Email: tri_d_nguyen@brown.edu
    Lilas Haddad is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the CoPsy department. Her previous research combined behavioral and EEG techniques to explore the evocation of multiple affordances from different visual objects in scenes. She is currently investigating how action preparation can enhance perceptual judgments, using techniques such as continuous action tracking.

    Email: lilas_haddad@brown.edu

Graduate Students

    Jacob Lader is a cognitive science PhD student advised by Joo-Hyun Song. His research investigates the processing of visual and spatial information and how this is integrated with motor learning. Prior to joining the PAC lab, Jacob researched individual differences in navigation with Nora Newcombe and reasoning about spatial concepts with Thomas Shipley at Temple University. He received his BS in Neuroscience and Studio Art from Muhlenberg College in 2022.

    Email: jacob_lader@brown.edu

Collaborating Graduate Students

    Anthony Bruno is a PhD student in the CoPsy department who is advised by Leslie Welch. His research investigates timing performance across sensory systems, with a focus on timing in vision. He uses psychophysical and motor methods to untangle the timing mechanisms used for perception and action. Prior to joining the CoPsy department, Anthony studied motion perception in musicians and nonmusicians with Nestor Matthews at Denison University.

    Email: anthony_bruno@brown.edu
    Giulia Scorza AzzarĂ  is a PhD Student at the University of Genoa and Italian Institute of Technology, in the Robotics Brain and Cognitive Sciences research line. Her principal research interest is Human-Robot Interaction, specifically focusing on cognitive robotics and humanoid robots. Her work mainly investigates how shared perceptions evolve in space and time during a physical human-robot interaction.

    Email: giulia_scorza_azzar@brown.edu

Undergraduate Students

    Anel Zhussubali is a junior from Astana, Kazakhstan concentrating in Cognitive Neuroscience. She is interested in learning more about the biological and neural bases of human behavior.

    Email: anel_zhussubali@brown.edu
    Daniela DeDona is a Junior from New York concentrating in Computer Science and Cognitive Science. She is interested in computational approaches to study cognition with a specific focus on the dynamic relationship between human interaction and computational systems.

    Email: daniela_dedona@brown.edu
    Dylan Parry is a Junior from Bethesda, Maryland concentrating in Cognitive Neuroscience and Economics. He is interested in exploring some of the many research studies exploring motor action and perception.

    Email: dylan_parry@brown.edu
    W. Ryan Waite is a senior from Cape Cod, Massachusetts concentrating in psychology and physics. He is interested in the factors affecting motor learning, whether they be differences between people or differences between task designs.

    Email: william_waite@brown.edu
    Isaiah Nawaz is a senior from New Jersey concentrating in Neuroscience and Business Economics. He is interested in studying the effects of motor training on perceptual sensitivity across different modalities.

    Email: isaiah_nawaz@brown.edu
    Amira Artykbayeva is a sophomore from Kazakhstan concentrating in Neuroscience/ Biomedical Engineering. She is interested in the neural basis of human behavior and particularly, eye-tracking and visual motor learning.

    Email: amira_artykbayeva@brown.edu

Visiting Students

    TBD!