People

Laura Thomas Former Primary Research Assistant / Lab Manager New York University Department of Psychology A.B. in Psychology, Class of 2000 Vassar College Graduate Student Duke University E-mail: laura.thomas@duke.edu

Research

     For a year and a half I was the Primary Research Assistant and Lab Manager in the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory of Dr. Elizabeth Phelps at New York University. I applied to graduate school, and hope to pursue my graduate education in the cognitive neuroscience of memory and emotion. I am interested in how our brain stores memories and information; how our past experiences affect our actions and emotions, in both conscious and nonconscious ways. Specifically, I am interested in the aspect of emotional, traumatic memory and how these types of memories are stored and coded differently in the brain than mundane, unemotional memories. After graduating from Vassar College in May 2000, I came to NYU to work for Dr. Phelps in order to pursue my interests in memory and emotion before going to graduate school.

     I was in charge of many aspects of the lab including programming experiments, running them, and analyzing the data. I am also responsible for the activities of undergraduates working in our lab; organizing their studies and helping them execute their experiments. Most of the experiments I programmed and administered are based upon animal models and extended to humans in order to research amygdala modulation of emotional memory formation, consolidation, and function. In the lab we utilized a broad spectrum of research methods, including physiological data, functional brain imaging, and behavioral studies.

     I have recently designed my own study investigating the neural basis of emotional learning and memory. I based this experiment on my undergraduate thesis at Vassar, and have combined it with knowledge I have gained from working with Dr. Phelps. The experiment involves using the Serial Reaction Time Task (SRTT), which is a task dependent on the striatum, and adding an emotional component to elicit activity in the amygdala in order to examine the amygdalar modulation of the striatal memory system. Much of the research Dr. Phelps and others have conducted examines amygdalar modulation of the hippocampal memory system in humans, but currently there is little research involving the amygdalar modulation of the striatal memory system in humans. I am also interested to see if the addition of an emotional component affects whether the serial knowledge becomes explicit or remains implicit. It has been shown in simple motor learning tasks that an aversive stimulus actually aids the learning of the task; subjects learn the motor task faster with an aversive stimulus such as a shock. What I am interested in with the Serial Reaction Time Task, however, is not only if an aversive stimulus aids in the learning of the sequence, but rather if the sequence information is more likely to reach conscious awareness with the addition of an aversive stimulus.

     I hope to continue researching the physiological mechanisms underlying emotional learning and memory in my graduate study. I am also very curious about nonconscious (implicit) processing, especially when it is involved in memory, and the implications that implicit memory has on consciousness and behavior.

     Currently, I am a graduate student with Kevin LaBar at Duke University.