Assistant Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience
Stanford University
470 Jordan Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-2130

Research

My primary interest is in the neural basis of emotion. I believe that a certain class of neurotransmitters (the biogenic amines) can powerfully modulate emotional experience at specific brain locations. I have addressed this topic with interdisciplinary methods including self-report, measurement of nonverbal behavior, comparative ethology, psychopharmacology, and functional brain imaging. My long-term goal is to understand the neurochemical and neuroanatomical mechanisms responsible for emotional experience and to explore the implications of these findings for the assessment and treatment of clinical disorders of affect and addiction, as well as for modeling and predicting economic behavior.

 

Education

B.A., Experimental Psychology, Trinity University, 1989

B.A., Comparative Religion, Trinity University, 1989

Ph.D., Experimental Psychology, Stanford University, 1993

Postdoctoral Fellowship, Neuroscience, UCSF Medical School, 1996

Research

SPAN: Symbiotic Project on Affective Neuroscience

Teaching

Winter 2008: Amines and Affect

Winter 2008: Affective Neuroscience

Spring 2008: Introduction to Psychology

Publications