Research
Verguts Lab (Ghent University)
Location:
Ghent, Belgium
Year:
01/2019 - 08/2020
Subject:
Computational Modeling
Cognitive Neuroscience
Role:
Graduate Research
Assistant
Team:
- Rien Sonck
- Prof. Dr. Tom Verguts
- Dr. Mehdi
Code and Documents:
Description:
Theta oscillations (between 4 and 7Hz) play a central role in cognitive control but, it remains unclear how the specific frequency of these oscillations affects cognitive control processes and if it can explain inter-individual variability in performance observed in cognitive control tasks. To investigate this, we used a computational model of cognitive control (i.e., the sync-model, Verguts’s (2017)) and performed a qualitative model analysis where we explored the model’s parameter space. Next, we performed a quantitative model analysis, where we conducted a parameter recovery analysis and fitted the model to empirical data. The qualitative analysis showed that the model’s theta-band frequencies affect cognitive control and lead to inter-individual variability while the qualitative analysis was less conclusive. The sync-model allowed us to model and analyze how neural oscillations result in cognitive control and showed us that it is possible to fit the sync-model to empirical data to extract key parameters.
Erlich Lab (New York University Shanghai)
Location:
Shanghai, China
Year:
09/2019 - 03/2020
Subject:
Decision-making
Cross-species study
Role:
Research Intern
Team:
Description:
We often accept it as a given that the behavior of rodents will give insight into the biological basis for human decision-making but there are still remaining problems: First, not enough studies have tried to adapt rodents' tasks into a human format. How would humans behave on a rodent decision-making task? Second, there is a methodological gap between a large chunk of human studies and animal studies. Therefore, we tried to develop a new cross-species experimental paradigm. The results show a promising novel non-verbal risk task that has the potential to help us bridge the gap between rodent and human decision-making under risk.
PAN lab (Ghent University)
Location:
Ghent, Belgium
Year:
02/2016 - 10/2016
Subject:
Neural Correlates of
Exclusion in Transgenders
Role:
Undergraduate Research
Assistant
Team:
Description:
Assisting Prof. Dr. Sven Müler in his lab was my first experience in aiding research and gaining hands on experience in a lab. Prof. Dr. Sven Müler tried to find neural correlates (using fMRI) of exclusion in transgenders and I helped him with the fMRI analysis using SPSS.