David P. Corina, Ph.D.

Professor, Departments of Linguistics and Psychology

Dr. Corina's research focuses on understanding the neural bases of higher cognitive function, specifically language and memory. He is interested in specifying functional and neuroanatomical models of human behavior and elucidating the degrees of plasticity within systems related to language and memory. His research encompasses psychology, linguistics, computational modeling and neuroscience, incorporating techniques that include self-designed behavioral tests, functional imaging (fMRI and functional spectroscopy), cortical stimulation and single unit recording. Investigating the neural plasticity of primary human language areas in the brain, Dr. Corina conducts studies that compare language processing in deaf users of American Sign Language and hearing users of spoken language. He is also investigating the perceptual and memory systems that underlie human actions, including American Sign Language. These studies make use of memory paradigms to understand the similarities and differences between processing different classes of human actions. Dr. Corina collaborates on research in adults with focal epilepsy to shed light on the neural systems involved in performing language and memory tasks. He also designs paradigms for functional neuroimaging to investigate language function in children with learning disabilities.

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Post-doctoral Scholars

Heather Knapp, Ph.D.

Heather is a Postdoctoral Scholar for the multi-disciplinary fMRI research team on the Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) Science of Learning Center grant, funded by the National Science Foundation. The purpose of VL2 is to gain a greater understanding of the biological,cognitive, linguistic, sociocultural, and pedagogical conditions that influence the acquisition of language and knowledge through the visual modality. Her areas of expertise include psycholinguistics, visual attention, and object perception. Heather also has interests in the burgeoning field of neuroethics, which concerns itself with ethical, political, and legal issues arising from advancements in the field of neuroscience. She holds degrees in Cognitive Psychology, Linguistics, and Neurobiology.

Eva Gutierrez, Ph.D.

Eva Gutierrez received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience (University of La Laguna, Spain).  As a part of Dr. Corina’s lab, Eva’s research interests are focused in semantic and phonological on line processing of signs.  Using the ERP technique, she investigates the electrophysiological correlates and the time course of phonological and semantic processing in signed languages attending not only to the commonalities of all human languages, but also to the idiosyncrasy of visual languages.  She is also interested in modality differences and the role of non-linguistic visual information in sign languages, as well as in the influence of early learning of signs over later processing.

Graduate Students

Michael Grosvald
Linguistics

Mike Grosvald has received Masters degrees in Mathematics (UC Berkeley) and Linguistics (UC Davis) and is now working toward his PhD in Linguistics at UC Davis. His projects in the Corina Lab focus on phonetics and phonology and include work on vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in spoken language and its possible analogs in signed language, processing of signs and human actions by signers and non-signers, and the use of ERP methodology to investigate the perceptibility of sub-phonemic contrasts. A one time English teacher abroad (Prague, Berlin, Taipei), his other interests include second (and third...) language acquisition, travel, classic movies, and computational linguistics.

Brandon Loudermilk
Linguistics

Brandon has research interests in a wide range of linguistic sub-disciplines including psycholinguistics, cognitive neurolinguistics, complex adaptive systems, and neural network modeling of language (dys)function.  Current projects include: identifying neuroanatomical correlates of language representation through cortical stimulation mapping; examining the characteristics and time course of phonological paraphasias during the Wada test (intracarotid sodium amobarbital procedure, IAP); developing backward propagation multi-layer neural networks to model language (dys)function; and using Optimality Theory (OT) to analyze lexical-phonological deficits in language disorders such as aphasia and apraxia of speech.

Nicole Spotswood
Psychology

Niki is involved in various experiments conducted by the lab, particularly those involving fMRI.  She participates in running subjects both in and out of the scanner as well as conducting data analysis from these studies.  Niki earned her B.S. in Psychology from UC Davis and continues to pursue her interests in Psychology through the Ph.D. program at UC Davis.

Kearnan Welch
Nutrition

Kearnan assists in various aspects of the lab especially in subject recruitment.  He earned his degree in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior from UCD.  Kearnan continues pursuing his interests in sign language research while participating in a Master's program in Nutrition at UCD.

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Staff

Mary C. Mendoza
Staff Research Associate, Lab Manager

Mary is involved in all aspects of our research, particularly in behavioral and fMRI experiments.  She earned a B.S. in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior from UC Davis.

Sarah Hafer
Junior Specialist

Sarah grew up in both southern California and Idaho, in a town of 3,000 population, within short distances from equine and bovine pastures. Here at CMB, she works as a full-time junior specialist where she assists Dr. Corina with many various projects and research.  Sarah also teaches ASL Linguistics courses at Berkeley City College (formerly Vista Community College) in Berkeley and American River College in Sacramento as well as teaching at Sacramento State.  She holds a baccalaureate honors in Linguistics from the University of New Mexico and minored in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).  Sarah also aims to do grad studies in Linguistics with a specialization in language acquisition for both L1 and L2 Deaf and hearing ASL users.  Sarah comes from a fourth generation Deaf family and is Deaf herself.  Her fire for linguistics originally developed probably from when she would hang out at the Salk Institute from age 3 to 7.  Sarah's mother worked as a research assistant in Dr. Ursula Bellugi's American Sign Language lab at the Salk Institute for a while and there she would play with words in ASL with her mothers's co-workers as well as asking them lots of questions about ASL.

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Undergraduate Interns

Christo Pallas
Max Stuart

Alumni

Tara Williams

Christian Lachaud, Ph.D.

Travis Taylor

Esther Kim