The Wagner Interpersonal Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab studies how the brain encodes and retrieves socially relevant information, from knowledge about ourselves and our friends to how the brain represents rewards and temptations such as food and drugs. Using a combination of functional neuroimaging, machine learning techniques and naturalistic stimuli (e.g., movies, stories, virtual reality and natural scenes), research in the lab is working towards developing methods to gain access to how individuals think and feel about the people and temptations that surround them.
Highlighted publications:
Broom, T.W., Chavez, R.S., Wagner, D.D. (2021). Becoming the King in the North: Identification with Fictional Characters is Associated with Greater Self-Other Neural Overlap. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 16, 541-551
Londerée, A. M., & Wagner, D. D. (2020). The orbitofrontal cortex spontaneously encodes food health and contains more distinct representations for foods highest in tastiness. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
Chavez, R. S., & Wagner, D. D. (2020). The neural representation of self is recapitulated in the brains of friends: A round-robin fMRI study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(3), 407–416.
