Faculty Labs and Research

Dr. Melloni studies the neurobiology of aggressive behavior. The main goal of this research is to understand how drug use and exposure to social stress during adolescence alter brain development and influence aggressive behavior.

Stress-related mental illnesses like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) are twice as common in women, but relevant pre-clinical research on the mechanisms of stress and fear has primarily been conducted in male animals. Our work explores the relationships between neural structure and function when both males and females experience aversive events, […]

Dr. Brenhouse’s lab studies the dynamic interaction between the brain, the body, and the environment throughout early life and adolescent development. Using animal models with genetic, behavioral, and pharmacological manipulation, her laboratory investigates why later manifestation of mental illness occurs, and how we might prevent it.

The Language & Mind Lab studies how the mind works and how we (laypeople) think it does, concentrating on the concept of innate knowledge.

The CORE lab seeks to answer questions about basic cognitive processes like conceptual organization, reasoning, and conceptual development.

The Cognitive Embodied Social Agents Research (CESAR) Lab works on the computational modeling of human behavior, both as a basic research method in the study of human behavior as well as the use of these computational models in a range of education and analysis applications.

The primary mission of the Epic Brain Lab is to understand the brain basis of psychiatric disorders and to promote translation of this knowledge into clinical practice. We employ multimodal neuroimaging techniques to investigate the pathophysiology of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, autism and ADHD.

The Translational Vision Lab uses cross-disciplinary approaches to study basic and clinical vision science. Their basic visual neuroscience research aims to extend models of sensory processing from laboratory settings to real world conditions.

Dr. DeSteno’s research focuses on the role of emotion in social cognition and behavior.

The Vision Laboratory at Northeastern University employs psychophysical and computational methods to better understand visual perception. Current topics under study include chromatic detection and discrimination, color appearance, visual plasticity, the relationship of response times to thresholds

Research in his lab focuses on two main areas. The first area examines the neural basis of affect including pleasure and pain, emotion (e.g. fear), and interactions between affect/emotion with cognition. The second area examines large-scale computational architectures of the brain with the goal that it will advance theory and research in affective neuroscience.

The Institute develops imaging tools to highlight chemical processes – enabling clinicians to better diagnose and treat disease.