motivated memory lab

R. Alison Adcock, M.D., Ph.D.,
Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Core Faculty, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience
B253 Levine Science Research Center
Duke University Box 90999
Durham, NC 27708

email: alison.adcock at duke.edu
phone: (919) 681-7486
fax: (919) 681-0815

Dr. Adcock received her MD and PhD from Yale University. She completed a residency in psychiatry and a postdoctoral fellowship at University of California San Francisco, and is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Download CV (pdf)

Sanghoon Han, PhD
sh56_at_duke.edu
Postdoc

Sanghoon went to graduate school at Duke and completed his doctoral thesis with Dr. Ian G. Dobbins where he studied the interaction between decision making and memory. His work combines behavioral research, statistical modeling, and functional neuroimaging (fMRI) of the brain focusing on the contribution of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and striatum regions to memory judgments. Currently, he is examining the genetic determinants of dopaminergic memory enhancement in motivated memory.





Kate MacDuffie
kate.macduffie_at_duke.edu
Lab Manager

Kate graduated from the University of Michigan in 2009 with a B.S. in Neuroscience. She hopes to pursue a PhD in cognitive neuroscience or cognitive neuropsychology, but for now is enjoying her time reading about the midbrain, honing her fMRI skills, and learning more about computers than she ever wanted to know.

Vishnu "Deepu" Murty
Graduate Student

If one could use a neurotransmitter to describe Vishnu “Deepu” Murty’s personality and research interests it would have to be dopamine. Socially, he responds well to reward, motivates memorable experiences, and is the metaphoric precursor to norepinephrine. He currently is running the laboratory’s weekly desktop animal battles.
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Betsy Johnson, MD
Graduate Student

Betsy plans to use human neuroimaging to investigate the effects of neuromodulatory neurotransmitter systems on memory formation, with a particular focus on the dopaminergic system. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of South Carolina where she majored in chemistry and minored in mathematics. She also received her MD from the University of Virginia before entering the neurobiology PhD program at Duke in pursuit of the primary goal of adding more letters to the end of her name.
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Jeff MacInnes
Graduate Student

When he's not delivering unsolicited lectures on the virtues of living in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Jeff heads up a number of projects aimed at training individuals to self-induce cognitive states that are most conducive to memory formation. Most recently this is being approached with the use of real-time fMRI - which involves providing participants with real-time neurofeedback of activity within particular brain regions.


Alex Rosati
Graduate Student



Ian Ballard
Research Assistant

Ian is a junior majoring in theoretical neuroscience. He does not know exactly which direction his research will take, but tentatively he plans on attending graduate school and learning to apply techniques from mathematics, physics, and psychology to construct models of the brain. In the Adcock Lab, Ian uses Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) to explore the effective connectivity between the PFC, VTA, NAcc, and HPC in a rewarding memory encoding task. Ultimately, this research may help to answer the question of whether the hippocampus is primed by reward through the influence of cognitive, cortical regions, or autonomic midbrain structures.




Amish Sheth
Research Assistant


Avni Patel
Research Assistant

Kelsey Short
Research Assistant

Rory Lubner
Research Assistant


If you're potentially interested in joining the lab as a graduate student, research assistant or intern, contact Alison Adcock

Sophia Vinogradov
Daphna Shohamy
Anthony Wagner
Mike Merzenich
Sri Nagarajan
John Gabrieli
Brian Knutson
Christopher deCharms
Jim Voyvodic
David Goldstein
Kevin LaBar
Stephen Mitroff
Scott Huettel
Michael Platt
Michael Chee
Amy Needham
Ian Dobbins

Sam Snider
Columbia University Alum




James Cook
Computer Technician, Contrarian.
Has a scheme to take over the world by turning poptart boxes into profit


Arul Thangavel
Research Assistant, exiled and about to embark on an epic adventure in memorization.


Eden Rouse
East Carolina University undergraduate



Sora Ely
Research Assistant


Sarah Figueroa
Research Assistant