Feindel Virtual Brain and Mind Lecture Series: The networked brain: interactions between emotion, motivation, and cognition
Dr. Luiz Pessoa presents, "The networked brain: interactions between emotion, motivation, and cognition".
Registration available here.
Speaker: Luiz Pessoa, PhD
Professor, Department of Psychology; Director, Maryland Neuroimaging Center, University of Maryland, College Park
Abstract: Research on the “emotional brain” often focuses on a few structures, such as the amygdala and the ventral striatum. In this presentation, I will discuss research that embraces a distributed view of both emotion- and motivation-related processing, as well as efforts to unravel the impact of emotion and motivation on large-scale brain networks that are important for perception, cognition, and action. In the framework presented, networks are dynamic processes and their organization unfolds temporally. In this manner, emotion and motivation have broad effects on brain and behavior. I will also describe work exploring how recurrent neural networks can be used to characterize spatio-temporal dynamics as measured by functional MRI data, and how recurrent neural networks can be used to study more naturalistic/dynamic paradigms.
Bio: He received a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and an M.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the same university. He followed his M.Sc. work on artificial neural networks by a PhD in computational neuroscience at Boston University. After returning to Brazil for a few years and being on the faculty of Computer Science at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, he returned to the US to take a position as Visiting Fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition headed by Leslie G. Ungerleider (1999 to 2003). He then joined the Department of Psychology at Brown University as an Assistant Professor (2003 to 2006), the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington, as an Associate Professor (2006 to 2010), and is now at the Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, where he is Professor.
The Feindel Virtual Brain and Mind (VBM) Seminar Series will advance the vision of Dr. William Feindel (1918–2014), Former Director of the Neuro (1972–1984), to constantly bridge the clinical and research realms. The talks will highlight the latest advances and discoveries in neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, and neuroimaging.
Speakers will include scientists from across The Neuro, as well as colleagues and collaborators locally and from around the world. The series is intended to provide a virtual forum for scientists and trainees to continue to foster interdisciplinary exchanges on the mechanisms, diagnosis and treatment of brain and cognitive disorders.
