SPRING 2015WINTER 2015 Breaking Through the Social Sciences · The Gerald C. Davison Award for...
Transcript of SPRING 2015WINTER 2015 Breaking Through the Social Sciences · The Gerald C. Davison Award for...
Breaking Through the Social Sciences
Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience,
Antonio Damasio had an exceptional 2014, in which
he received the most prestigious honor in the field of
psychology, the Grawemeyer Award, for his major
influence in contemporary psychology, as well as in
the fields of neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry and
philosophy. While the Grawemeyer would have been
the crowning achievement for any psychologist who
won it that year, a couple months later, the APA pub-
lished an article in the Archives of Scientific Psychol-
ogy, naming Damasio one of the 100 most eminent
psychologists of the modern era.
Needless to say, if you thought he might slow
down in 2015, you were very wrong. Damasio has
published nine articles and three book chapters this
year, ranging from topics on homeostasis and its ap-
plication on economics, to neural correlates of grati-
tude. He has been traveling all over the world, col-
lecting honorary degrees and making lectures in Por-
tugal, France, Switzerland, Italy, Mexico, Canada,
and throughout the United States. Recently, Antonio
Damasio has been named by the Sciences Humaines
in its list of the “50 key thinkers in the human scienc-
es of the past two centuries.” Between the two lists,
he finds himself alongside names such as: Albert
Bandura, Jean Piaget, Sigmund Freud, and Charles
Darwin. His work has now been cited over 32,000
times and his research has received continuous Feder-
al funding for over 30 years.
SPRING 2015 WINTER 2015
Damasio is a member of the American Acade-
my of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of
Sciences' Institute of Medicine, and the European
Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is the recipient of
several prizes, amongst them the Grawemeyer
Award, the Honda Prize, the Prince of Asturias
Award in Science and Technology and the Beaumont
Medal from the American Medical Association. He
has also received honorary doctorates from the Uni-
versities of Sorbonne, Aachen, Copenhagen, Leiden,
Barcelona, Coimbra, Leuven and numerous others.
When Damasio isn’t too busy traveling
around the world accepting awards, giving TED
Talks, or making television and radio appearances,
he is hard at work here at USC, co-directing the USC
Dornsife Brain and Creativity Institute with his wife
and colleague, Dr. Hannah Damasio. The Damasio’s
have made seminal contributions to the understand-
ing of brain processes underlying emotions, feelings,
decision-making, and consciousness. For more infor-
mation on the Brain and Creativity Institute, please
visit the website at <www.usc.edu/bci>.
Dr. Hanna Damasio and Dr. Antonio Damasio
(pictured above) received honorary degrees this sum-
mer from the Université Paris Descartes, more widely
known as the Sorbonne. The Sorbonne is one of the
pioneering institutions in the field of psychology and
is home to many psychologists who have helped to
create and shape the field—most notably Alfred Bi-
net and Jean Piaget.
Berntsen L., & Baker, L. A. (2015). Defiant behavior during adolescence across cultures. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), Inter-
national encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (second edition), volume 6 (pp. 7-11). New York: Elsevier.
Cunningham, S. I., Weiland, J. D., Bao, P., Lopez-Jaime, G. R., & Tjan, B. S. (2015). Correlation of vision loss with
tactile-evoked V1 responses in retinitis pigmentosa. Vision Research, 111, Part B, 197–207. http://doi.org/10.1016/
j.visres.2014.10.015.
Droutman, V., Bechara, A. & Read, S.J. (2015). Roles of the different sub-regions of the insular cortex in various
phases of the decision-making process. Front. Behavioral Neuroscience. 9:309. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00309.
Droutman, V., Read, S.J. & Bechara, A. (2015). Revisiting the role of the insula in addiction. Trends in cognitive sci-
ences 19.7, 414-420.
Files, B. T., Tjan, B. S., Jiang, J., & Bernstein, L. E. (2015). Visual speech discrimination and identification of natu-
ral and synthetic consonant stimuli. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(878). http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00878.
Immordino-Yang, M.H. (November, 2015) Emotions, Learning and the Brain: Exploring the educational implications
of affective neuroscience. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Kammen, A., Law, M., Tjan, B. S., Toga, A. W., & Shi, Y. (2016). Automated retinofugal visual pathway reconstruc-
tion with multi-shell HARDI and FOD-based analysis. NeuroImage, 125, 767–779. http://doi.org/10.1016/
j.neuroimage.2015.11.005.
Karlsson, I.K., Bennet, A.M., Ploner, A., Andersson, T., Reynolds, C.A., Gatz, M., & Pedersen, N.L. (2015).
Apolipoprotein E ɛ4 genotype and the temporal relationship between depression and dementia. Neurobiology of Ag-
ing, 36, 1751-1756.
Koritzky G, Rice C, Dieterle C & Bechara A (2015). The Biggest Loser Thinks Long-Term: Recency as a Predictor
of Success in Weight Management. Front. Psychol. 6, 1864. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01864 .
Martins, B., Ponzio, A., Velasco, R., Kaplan, J., & Mather, M. (2015). Dedifferentiation of emotion regula-
tion strategies in the aging brain. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10, 840-847. http://
scan.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/nsu129?%0Aijkey=R5wZBPloC3zNN7i&keytype=ref .
Nielsen, S.E., Barber, S. J., Chai, A., Clewett, D. V., & Mather, M. (2015). Sympathetic arousal increases a negative
memory bias in young women with low sex hormone levels. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 62, 96-106. http://
www.usc.edu/matherlab/pdfs/NielsenBarberetal2015.pdf.
Scurich, N., Nguyen, K., & John, R. (2015). Quantifying the presumption of innocence. Law, Probability and Risk, 1-
16. doi:10.1093/lpr/mgv016.
Tuvblad, C., Dhamija, D., Berntsen, L., Raine, A., & Liu, J. (2015). Cross-cultural validation of the Reactive-
Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ) using four large samples from the US, Hong Kong, and China. Journal of
Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment. Advance online publication. doi:10.1007/s10862-015-9501-2.
If you have submissions for the Department of Psychology Newsletter, please email Daniel Paris <[email protected]>.
Remember to check the calendar on the front page of the department website for all upcoming events!
Dr. Gerald Davidson was honored with a new fund created by several of his former students
in order to recognize Davison’s contributions as a research advisor, clinical instructor, and mentor.
The Gerald C. Davison Award for Excellence in Exemplifying the Boulder Model will be given
annually to a student in the USC Clinical Science program who has made a superior contribution
to applying psychological knowledge in their clinical work.
Dr. Bosco Tjan received a grant from the National Institute of Health for a study on the rela-
tionships between retinal pathologies and their downstream impact on the central visual pathway
of the human brain over the natural courses of blinding diseases and their treatments.
2015/9-2019/8 (PI, U01) NEI/NIH. Human Connectomes for Low Vision, Blindness, and Sight
Restoration. $2,747,327 direct, $1,285,223 F&A. [NIH U01EY025864]
Dr. Norbert Schwarz was awarded the 2015 Oswald Külpe Pr ize. Oswald Külpe paved the
way for numerous important developments, from Gestalt psychology to modern cognitive science.
Every three years the University of Würzburg awards the Oswald Külpe Prize to a researcher who
has made exceptional experimental and theoretical contributions to the understanding of higher
mental processes.
Dr. Donna Spruijt-Metz received the Obesity Society’s annual Pioneer Award for excellence
in eHealth/mHeath research.
Sptuijt-Metz is the director of the Mobile Health (mHealth) Collaboratory at USC Dornsife’s Cen-
ter for Social and Economic Research. Her work meshes 21st century technologies with transdisci-
plinary metabolic, behavioral, and environmental research to fight childhood obesity.
Dr. Kean Hsu, (recent graduate) was awarded 1st place for his poster at the 49th Annual
Convention of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) in Chicago.
His poster, "Compounded Deficits: The association between neuropsychological impairment and
attention biases in currently depressed, formerly depressed, and never depressed individuals" was
based on his dissertation under the direction of Dr. Gerald Davison.
Addie Timmons (Clinical Science) received a 2015 APA American Psychological Association
Dissertation Research Award for her dissertation project titled: Romantic Partners’ Physiological
and Emotional Coregulation in the Home Environment.
Addie is a fourth year graduate student under Dr. Gayla Margolin. Her research interests include:
Couple dynamics, parent-child conflict, coregulation, and psychophysiology.
The annual Psyched 4 Jobs conference organized by the Master’s of Applied Psy-
chology program attracted over one-hundred undergraduate attendees this year
from several different universities in Southern California. In addition to conduct-
ing popular resume workshops, the students brought in speakers from entertain-
ment, consulting, and government industries to discuss how they leverage their
psychology degrees in their professions. In particular, two USC alums were fea-
tured panelists: Kendra Keyse (’12), and Laila Ajabi (’10).
Research Spotlight
The NEST Lab, directed by Dr. Darby Saxbe
(captured above, as she leads a lab meeting), aims to
take a biopsychosocial perspective on the understand-
ing of health and well-being in the context of family
and peer relationships. Dr. Saxbe is interested in how
nature and nurture intersect – how early experiences
shape the development of emotion regulation, stress
responding, and social perception, and how these
phenomena influence subsequent psychosocial func-
tioning. The lab looks at questions like, “How does
everyday family life affect stress hormones?” and
“Do people who live together show synchrony in
their fluctuations of cortisol?”
The NEST Lab is currently working on sever-
al projects, including the HATCH (Hormones, AT-
tachment, and CHildbirth) study, which looks at how
the brain and body prepare for parenting. More spe-
cifically, the study explores how couples' cortisol and
oxytocin levels change over pregnancy, how social
support affects subjective birth experiences and peri-
natal medical interventions, and what neural and hor-
monal factors are associated with postpartum attach-
ment. The lab is also working on an ongoing neu-
roimaging study looking at regions of the brain asso-
ciated with theory of mind, mentalizing, and social
perception to see how adolescents view themselves.
You can find more about these projects, publi-
cations, and other details about the NEST Lab, on
their website: <http://dornsife.usc.edu/nestlab>.
The NEST Lab (as seen below) is one of the
most active labs in the Department of Psychology.
Aside from Dr. Saxbe, there are four graduate stu-
dents, a lab manager, and a dozen more undergraduate
students who are actively contributing to the lab at
any given time. Due to the lab’s incorporated neu-
roimaging research, it is also known for its collabora-
tion with the Dornsife Brain and Creativity Institute,
as well as with other professors at USC, such as: Gay-
la Margolin, Larissa Borofsky, Mary Helen Immordi-
no-Yang, Jonas Kaplan, and Xiao-Fei Yang.
As a result of the fascinating topics and
groundbreaking research being worked on in the
NEST Lab, Dr. Saxbe has become one of the most
sought after graduate advisors for perspective stu-
dents. She also works with the highest number of un-
dergraduate honors students on their independent re-
search projects. Veronica Gempis, senior honors stu-
dent, explains that, “Dr. Saxbe is an incredible men-
tor. Aside from completing an honors thesis, I have
been able to participate in great learning experiences,
such as cutting placenta samples and collecting hair
samples from newborns in the hospital.” Her research
has also inspired a new undergraduate course in the
department called Stress, Health, and the Mind-Body
Connection. In its third year being offered, this course
has become so popular, it is one of the first in the de-
partment to reach capacity each semester.