People

People in the Mangun Lab

Ron Mangun, PhD (UCSD) , Director/Professor, Psychology and Neurology: tel: 530-297-4655 office: 267 Cousteau Pl., Room 109
Dr. Mangun's work on the cognitive neuroscience of attention investigates how we perceive, attend, ignore and become aware of events in our environment. Recordings of event-related brain potentials (ERP) from healthy persons and special patient groups provide high temporal resolution measures of stimulus processing in the human brain. The goal of this research is to identify the mechanisms of attentional selection by permitting sensory analysis of attended and ignored stimuli to be studied under a wide variety of task circumstances. To identify the brain systems and circuits involved in various attentional processes (i.e., control and selection), tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are used in conjunction with ERP. fMRI permits the living human brain to be revealed to us as it functions to enable our sensations, thoughts and actions. The information obtained from these combined behavioral, neuropsychological and neurophysiological studies yields insight into the computational and functional neuroanatomical structure of human cognition, and is essential for addressing the deficits in attention and awareness that accompany neurological and psychiatric disease.

Andre Bastos, BA, Graduate Student, Neuroscience: keywords: attention, consciousness, meditation, signal processing
I am a first year graduate student, currently rotating in Ron Mangun's Lab. We will be studying the mechanisms of attention selection and control using EEG and fMRI. My scientific interests include attention, consciousness, meditation, and advanced methods for data analysis and signal processing.

Jesse Bengson, MS, Graduate Student, Mangun Lab: tel: 530-297-4408 office: 267 Cousteau Place, Room 108 keywords: attention, awareness & perception, experimental introspection

Joy Geng, PhD (Carnegie Mellon University) , Assistant Professor, Psychology: tel: 530-297-4486 office: 267 Cousteau Pl., Room 173
Research in the lab focuses on how goal-directed and sensory-driven information are integrated to determine what we perceive. The purpose of the work is to understand the mechanisms of selective attention that flexibly balance the ability to focus on a task of choice and sensitivity to external information. An additional line of work examines the role of working memory in determining whether the interactions between top-down and bottom-up attentional processes are competitive or cooperative. We are interested in both the neural and cognitive processes involved and use fMRI and eye-tracking combined with response time and accuracy measurements.

Katherine MacLean, MA (UC Davis) , Graduate Student, Mangun Lab: tel: 530-297-4409 office: 267 Cousteau Pl., Room 107 keywords: sustained attention, attention training, meditation

Ali Mazaheri, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar, Mangun Lab: tel: 530-297-4461 office: 267 Cousteau Pl, Rm 112

Lara Polse, Junior Specialist, Mangun Lab: Lara Polse is Junior Specialist in Ron Mangun's Lab, and also in Tamara Swaab's Lab, and works on studies of non-literal language and discourse in normal populations, and also language processing in children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

Risa Sawaki, MA (Hokkaido University) , Visiting Scholar, Mangun Lab: tel: 530-297-4408 office: 267 Cousteau Pl., Room 108

Bong Walsh, Graduate Student, Mangun Lab: tel: 530-297-4408 office: 267 Cousteau Pl., Room 108

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