CAN Lab

Eli's favorite part of coming to work with me today was visiting the fountain outside the lab. Remember to be present and enjoy the moment! We almost walked by the fountain without stopping, and I'm so glad we got to play in the water together.

CANLab grad students and summer undergrads enjoyed listening to the opening performance of the Grant Park Orchestra! It was Chicago at its best...And the food and snacks were delicious. Now, back to work everyone!

Dr. Morrison attended the American Federation for Aging Research's (AFAR) annual conference in Santa Barbara, CA for the second time.  Individuals invited to attend the meeting have been selected by the Gilbert, Glazer, Ellison and Glenn private foundations for their innovative approaches to questions involving human aging as well as age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's.  Presentations at the three day meeting are a tour de force of neuroscience demonstrating cutting edge approaches from cell and molecular biology to neuropathology to behavioral and cognitive neuroscience and even public health and epidemiology. Many investigators use multiple approaches in their laboratories. For instance one researcher from Israel is using optigenetics to specifically activate diseased neural circuits in Alzheimer's mice while their brain activity is measured using high magnetic field fMRI. Dr. Morrison presented work from the CAN lab's aging research group using neuroimaging to understand variability in memory and executive function in older adults exhibiting age typical as well as exceptional and pathologic aging.

Congratulations to CAN labbie, Elise Gagnon who has received a Psichi/APS Summer Research Grant to work with Dr. Morrison on her Johnson Scholarship project investigating changes in brain networks responsible for analogical reasoning in girls and young women.  Just 6 people from hundreds of applicants across the country receive one of these grants each year.  Way to go Elise!

A hardy welcome to our new CAN lab, lab manager, Matt Kmiecik.  Matt has worked in the lab as a student for the last three years where he has studied the cognitive neuroscience of verbal analogical reasoning--work he will continue in the lab during the next year. Matt has received LUROP funding for his projects over the last several years and will be joining Dr. Morrison at the Cognitive Science Society (Berlin, Germany) and the Third International Conference on Analogy (Dijion, France) at the beginning of August.  As with Krishna, Matt is well versed in all we do in the lab including experimental design and testing, programming experiments in e-Prime and analyzing EEG data using EMSE.  Matt will also be supervising training efforts in the lab.  If you have questions about the lab in general or your project in particular please contact him in LL21!