People
Up one levelPeople in the Saron Lab
Core Faculty
- Clifford Saron, PhD (Albert Einstein College of Medicine) , Associate Research Scientist
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tel: 415-307-9757 office: 202 Cousteau Pl., Suite 250, Room 268
My work centers on two broad areas. The first is focused on the training of attention and emotion regulation through contemplative practice. Our main project here is known as “The Shamatha Project” a large-scale collaborative and multimethod longitudinal study of the effects of intensive meditation training. We use qualitative, self-report, behavioral, electrophysiological, and biochemical measures to begin to elucidate the many levels of personal and physiological change that accompany such training. My second research area concerns sensory processing, multisensory integration, and interhemispheric communication in children with autism spectrum disorders. In collaboration with colleagues at the CMB and M.I.N.D. Institute we are using sensitive behavioral measures, eye tracking, and dense channel array event-related potentials to investigate possible deficits in these low-level processes which likely contribute to the complex phenotype of autism.
Trainees
- Brandon King, Graduate Student, Saron Lab
- tel: 530-297-4693 office: 202 Cousteau Pl., Suite 250, Room 258
- Iman M.Rezazadeh, PhD, Msc, Bsc, Postdoctoral Scholar, Saron Lab
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tel: 530-297-4444 office: 202 Cousteau Pl., Room 269
I am a biomedical engineer with specialized expertise in neuroscience,brain-computer interfaces, neuroimaging and virtual reality. My Ph.D. project developed and implemented an adaptive and self-organized Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) to control virtual forearm prosthesis. The BCI adapts to a subject's cognitive and emotional states, thus improving the usability of the interface. After completion of my PhD I was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis – one of the world's top research centers in the field of cognitive neuroscience. My current work is a project funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). It uses neuroimaging and advanced signal processing techniques to study sensory integration in the brains of autistics and typical developing children. During the past years I have collaborated with international leading researchers in brain computer interaction, signal processing and cognitive research fields including the Key Centre for Design and Computing, University of Sydney(2008-2009), the University of Essex, UK( 2008-2011), the University of California, Davis (2012-present). I have expert programming skills in Brain Computer Interaction and Virtual Reality coupled with strong skills and ease of operating various novel software packages through work experience for working on the related projects. I am working on EEG and ERP signals to find out different multisensory integration patterns within EEG/ERP signals in autistics children and typical developing children. In this project, both types of temporal-spatial and neuroimaging data are used as the features for classification.
- Anthony Zanesco, Graduate Student, Saron Lab
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tel: 530-297-4693 office: 202 Costeau Pl., Suite 250, Room 268
For the last three years, I have been involved in the Shamatha Project, a longitudinal study of the effects of intensive meditation training on attention, emotion regulation, and their neural correlates. I am now broadly involved in the preparation and analysis of the emotion and personality related paradigms used in the study. This includes comprehensive analysis of video footage, taken of participants while viewing emotionally arousing film stimuli, using the Facial Action Coding System. In addition, I am working on the analysis of measures of autonomic physiology and startle eyeblink reflex. Recently, with the help of a grant from the Mind & Life Institute, I have completed data collection during two one-month Vipassana retreats in order to investigate the effects of intensive meditation training on facets of cognitive control. My interests include using multiple techniques including behavioral, self-report, and physiological measurement to explore how we might better regulate our emotions and develop compassion.
Research Staff
- Quinn Conklin, Junior Specialist, Saron Lab
- Anahita Hamidi, Graduate Student, Saron Lab
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tel: 530-297-4693 office: 202 Cousteau Pl., Suite 250, Room 235
- Erika Rosenberg, Ph.D. (University of California, San Francisco) , Consulting Scientist, Saron Lab
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tel: 530-297-4693 office: 202 Cousteau Pl., Suite 250, Room 258
Erika Rosenberg is an expert in facial expression measurement, on which she consults with a variety of academic and non-academic clients and teaches workshops worldwide. Her scientific research on emotion has examined how our feelings are revealed in our facial expressions, how social factors influence emotional signals, and how anger affects cardiovascular health. She is also a teacher of meditation and a meditation researcher. As a consulting scientist with the CMB, Erika Rosenberg is a senior investigator on the Shamatha Project, a controlled intervention trial of the cognitive, emotional, and neurophysiological effects of sustained meditation training.
- Fernanda Vieira, Junior Specialist, Saron Lab
- tel: 530-297-4693 office: 202 Cousteau Pl., Suite 250, Room 235
Undergraduate Research Assistants
- Alyssa Colby, Saron Lab
- Tucker Fisher, Saron Lab
- Anastasiya Isayeva, BS, Saron Lab
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- Sarabeth Maciey, Saron Lab
- Antoinette O'Neill, Saron Lab
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- Iva Petrovchich, Saron Lab
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An undergraduate research assistant studying multisensory integration in autistic and normally developing children, in collaboration with Dr. Clifford Saron.
- Ramiel Rogers, Takarae Lab
Alumni
- Sarah Abedi, Junior Specialist, Saron Lab
- Margarita Beransky, Junior Specialist, Saron Lab
- Nicole Bibel, Research Assistant, Saron Lab
- David Bridwell, Graduate Student, Srinivasan Lab, UC Irvine
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For more information, see http://www.davidbridwell.info/
- Vanessa Carmean, Staff Research Associate, Psychiatry, MIND Institute
- Sam Cheyette, Mundy Lab
- Costanza Colombi, Graduate Student, Saron Lab
- Mariana DeAndrade, Undergraduate Assistant, Saron Lab
- Daniel Gray, Swaab Lab
- Ryan Hubbard, BS (UC Davis) , Junior Specialist, Takarae Lab
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My research interests lie within the realm of cognitive neuroscience; broadly, I am interested in memory, attention, cognitive control, and neuropsychological aberrations in clinical populations. As a Junior Specialist in the Saron Lab, my duties are twofold. First, I work with Dr. Yukari Takarae to investigate mechanisms of executive attention and cognitive control in adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders through the use of eye-tracking and high-density EEG recordings. Second, I work with Dr. Clifford Saron to research low-level auditory processing in young children with Autism in order to definitively characterize the Autism phenotype.
- Anne Kalomiris, Undergraduate Research Assistant, Saron Lab
- Neharika Khurana, Research Assistant, Mundy Lab
- Susie Kilby, Research Assistant, Mundy Lab
- Lyndsey Marie Marcelino, Junior Specialist, Rivera Lab
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- Saloni Mathur, Junior Specialist, Saron Lab
- Thomas McLennan, Undergraduate Research Assistant, Saron Lab
- Andrea Schneider, PhD (University Potsdam, Germany) , Postdoctoral Scholar, Saron Lab
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Keywords: EEG, ERP, fragile X, autism, multisensory integration
- Ashley Stark, Junior Specialist, Saron Lab
- Yukari Takarae, Ph.D., Assistant Research Scientist