Research Groups

Buckeye Brain Aging Lab (B-BAL)

PI: Scott M. Hayes

The Buckeye Brain Aging Lab (B-BAL) examines age-related changes in memory and the brain, variables that optimize cognitive and brain health (cardiorespiratory fitness, mobility, strength), and the neural correlates of memory in healthy and patient populations.

Highlighted publications:

Hayes, S. M., Hayes, J. P., Williams, V. J., Liu, H., & Verfaellie, M. (2017). FMRI activity during associative encoding is correlated with cardiorespiratory fitness and source memory performance in older adults. Cortex, 91, 208-220. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.

Hayes, S. M., Salat, D. H., Forman, D. E., Sperling, R. A., & Verfaellie, M. (2015). Cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with white matter integrity in aging. Ann Clin Transl Neurol, 2(6), 688-698. doi:10.1002/acn3.204

Palombo, D. J., Hayes, S. M., Reid, A. G., & Verfaellie, M. (2019). Hippocampal contributions to value-based learning: Converging evidence from fMRI and amnesia. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci, 19(3), 523-536. doi:10.3758/s13415-018-00687-8

Clinical Neuroscience Lab

PI: Ruchika Prakash

The Clinical Neuroscience Lab seeks to assess the efficacy of psychosocial lifestyle interventions, including physical activity and mindfulness meditation, in improving cognitive and affective functioning in clinical and healthy populations. The lab’s research utilizes resting state and task-based functional connectivity to elucidate potential mechanisms underlying change from healthy lifestyle behaviors.

Highlighted publications:

Fountain-Zaragoza, Samimy, Rosenberg, & Prakash. (2019). Connectome-based models predict attentional control in aging adults. Neuroimage, 186,1-13.

Manglani, Samimy, Schirda, Nicholas, & Prakash. (2020). Effects of 4-week mindfulness training versus adaptive cognitive training on processing speed and working memory in multiple sclerosis. Neuropsychology, 34,591-604.

Cognitive Control Lab

PI: Andrew B. Leber

The Cognitive Control Lab aims to understand how we control behavior.  The lab is especially interested in our abilities to resist distraction and suppress irrelevant information, the influences of past experience, and the factors motivating the choice of optimal vs. suboptimal control strategies.

Highlighted publications:

Irons, J. L. & Leber (2020).  Developing an individual profile of attentional control strategy. Current Directions in Psychological Science.  Advance Online Publication https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721420924018

Leber, A. B., &, Gwinn, R. E., Hong, Y. L., & O’Toole, R. J. (2016).  Implicitly learned suppression of irrelevant spatial locations.  Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 23 (6), 1873-1881. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1065-y

Leber, A. B., Turk-Browne, N. B., & Chun, M. M. (2008).  Neural predictors of moment-to-moment fluctuations in cognitive flexibility.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 105 (36), 13592-13597. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0805423105

Interpersonal Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab

PI: Dylan Wagner 

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.

Delwin Lindsey

Dr. Lindsey's lab studies human color vision. They use fMRI techniques to explore neurophysiological correlates of the high level representation of color appearance, categorization and memory. They are particularly interested in the role of language in mediating these representations.

The MINDSET Lab

PI: Jasmeet Hayes

The MINDSET lab studies the chronic effects of traumatic brain injury and psychological stress on the brain, cognition, and risk for neurodegenerative disease. We incorporate neuroscience tools including structural T1-weighted imaging, diffusion tensor imaging, and fMRI with genetic and molecular markers to examine links between trauma and neurodegenerative disease.

Highlighted publications:

Hayes, J.P., Moody, J.N., Roca, J.G., Hayes, S.M. (2020). Body mass index is associated with smaller medial temporal lobe volume in those at risk for Alzheimer's disease. NeuroImage: Clinical, 25, 102156.

Hayes, J.P., Logue, M.W., Sadeh, N., Spielberg, J.M., Verfaellie, M., Hayes, S.M. et al. (2017). Mild traumatic brain injury is associated with reduced cortical thickness in those at risk for Alzheimer's disease. Brain, 140, 813-825.

Model-based Cognitive Neuroscience Lab

PI: Brandon M. Turner

The Model-based Cognitive Neuroscience Lab investigates how individual experiences shape one’s representations of the world, and ultimately how these representations guide behavior. To this end, a large component of the lab’s focus is on understanding how brain and behavioral data can be linked to form a more complete understanding of the mind.

Highlighted publications:

Bahg, G., Sederberg, P. B., Myung, J. I., Li, X., Pitt, M. A., Lu, Z.-L., and Turner, B. M. (2020). Real-time Adaptive Design Optimization within Functional MRI Experiments.  Computational Brain and Behavior, 3, 400-429.

Turner, B. M., Palestro, J. J., Miletic, S., and Forstmann, B. U. (2019). Advances in techniques for imposing reciprocity in brain-behavior relations. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 102, 327-336.

Multidisplinary Opportunities for Movement Education and Science (MOvES) Lab

PI: James Onate

The Multidisciplinary Opportunities for Movement Education & Science (MOvES) Lab is made up of a group of athletic trainers, engineers, and students who are exploring human movement. The MOvES Lab is directed by Dr. James Onate and works in conjunction with the Movement Analysis and Performance (MAP) Lab and the Human Performance Collaborative (HPC)

The goal of the MOvES Lab is to minimize the occurrence of injuries and increase performance in a variety of active populations.  The MOvES Lab works with Ohio State athletes, the military, youth baseball teams, high school athletes across the country, and active individuals in the Columbus area.

Social & Affective Immunology Lab 

PI: Baldwin Way

The Social & Affective Immunology Lab's research is focused on how psychological factors (e.g. stress; valence weighting bias) trigger the immune system and also how the immune system can alter emotions and decision-making. They use both pharmacological (acetaminophen; ibuprofen; typhoid vaccination) and endogenous measures (e.g. C-Reactive Protein) of immune function. They are also conducting a large, longitudinal imaging study of adolescents to look at how geospatial stress exposure alters neural activity and predicts future substance use.

Social Cognition, Adjustment, and Neurodevelopment (SCAN) Lab

PI: Kristen Hoskinson

The Hoskinson Lab aims to improve understanding of the neuroanatomical and functional substrates that contribute to cognitive, emotional, and behavioral morbidities after childhood neurologic injury.  Their research integrates neuroimaging methods with assessed and observed social and emotional function to identify those at greatest risk of poor outcome. Current funded work examines the neural and behavioral consequences of traumatic brain injury, congenital heart disease, and pediatric cancer.

Highlighted publications:

Wier, R., Aleksonis, H. A., … & Hoskinson, K. R. (2019). Fronto-limbic white matter microstructure, behavior, and emotion regulation in survivors of pediatric brain tumor. Journal of Neuro-Oncology, 143, 483-493.

Hoskinson, K. R., Bigler, E. D., … & Yeates, K. O. (2019). The mentalizing network and theory of mind mediate adjustment after childhood traumatic brain injury. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 14, 1285-1295.

Aleksonis, H. A., Wier, R., … & Hoskinson, K. R. (in press). Diffusion tensor imaging of survivors of pediatric brain tumor and healthy controls: Associations with neurocognitive function. Applied Neuropsychology: Child.

Vision & Cognitive Neuroscience Lab 

PI: Julie Golomb

The Vision & Cognitive Neuroscience Lab uses perceptual and computational cognitive neuroscience techniques to investigate human visual processing. Research topics include how visual properties such as color, shape, and spatial location are perceived and coded in the brain, and how these representations are influenced by eye movements, shifts of attention, and other dynamic cognitive processes.

Highlighted publications:

Nag, S. , Berman, D., and Golomb, J.D. (2019). Category-selective areas in human visual cortex exhibit preferences for stimulus depth. NeuroImage. 196: 289-301.

Dowd, E.W. and Golomb, J.D. (2019). Object feature binding survives dynamic shifts of spatial attention. Psychological Science. 30(3), 343-361.

Z-Lab

PI: Zeynep Saygin

The Z-Lab studies Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. We use longitudinal neuroimaging and computational modeling to investigate the developing human brain, answering questions like: What are the brain building blocks that we are born with, how do they change with maturation and experience, and can we use this information to predict the development of individual abilities later in life?

Highlighted publications:

"Tracking the Roots of Reading Ability: White Matter Volume and Integrity Correlate with Phonological Awareness in Prereading and Early-Reading Kindergarten Children.” (2013). Journal of Neuroscience.

"Connectivity precedes function in the development of the visual word form area." (2016). Nature Neuroscience.

"Cortical selectivity driven by connectivity: Innate connectivity patterns of the visual word form area" (submitted 2020).