Faculty Labs

• Mind and Brain Laboratory
• The Computer and Human Interaction Laboratory Environment (CHILE)
• Emotional and Social Decision-Making Lab
• Social Cognition Laboratory

Mind and Brain Laboratory

What is the interaction between the mind and the brain? We seek to understand what the mind is, and how we think and feel. We approach this question with several kinds of research. One focus is discovering how the brain operates, with emphasis on

1. how thinking occurs in the brain
2. how we have awareness and consciousness as a result of what happens in the brain
3. how we control our attention in the brain. We also focus on the neural mechanisms of emotion, to understand what it is, and how thinking and emotion work together.

Our brain research is conducted in a state-of-the-art high-density EEG (or brainwave) laboratory employing a Biosemi Active-2 64-channel or 128-channel electroencephalograph, and in conjunction with the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and Los Alamos National Laboratories, we employ functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Magnetoencephalogram (MEG) brain imaging.

A second goal of our laboratory is to conduct behavioral research on attention and decision-making. How do we notice that there is an issue we must deal with? When we do, how do we decide what to do about it? This research is conducted with behavioral reasoning and attention paradigms using our computer laboratory.

A third project in our laboratory, in conjunction with the NMSU Counseling center, focuses on the cognitive and neural components of depression, to understand what components make it difficult for people to recover from depression.

Our fourth project is a direct interface between the brain and computers, which will allow people to directly control a computer (or any other device) with thought. We are always seeking motivated students interested in becoming involved in any of our research projects.

For more information about Mind and Brain Lab, please contact Dr. Jim Kroger.

The Computer and Human Interaction Laboratory Environment (CHILE)

The Computer and Human Interaction Laboratory Environment (CHILE) focuses on the perceptual and cognitive processes involved in people's use of information technology. Much of our work has focused in two areas

• information visualization (including graphs, maps, and tables)
• assistive technology (especially for blind computer users).

Our research addresses a number of perceptual and cognitive areas. The figure shows the CHILE Lab as the central hob connecting different types of information technology to perceptual and cognitive areas.

For more information about the CHILE lab, please contact Dr. Gillan.

Emotional and Social Decision-Making Lab

In the Emotion and Social Decision-Making Lab we explore the role that emotions play in social interactions. We are currently exploring how a participant's emotional reactions affect their subsequent strategy choices in several negotiation tasks developed by experimental economists. The lab currently consists of four inter-connected cubicles each containing a computer and a digital video camera. Each computer is equipped with EMOTLAB software. EMOTLAB software enables the researcher to create a virtual social interaction in which participants are videotaped while engaging in a negotiation task with a partner in the next cubicle.

For more information about the Emotion and Social Decision-Making Lab please contact Dr. Timothy Ketelaar.

Social Cognition Laboratory

Researchers in the social cognition lab perform experiments in a variety of different social cognition areas. For example, some of our attribution research deals with the interplay of affective and cognitive factors in influencing attributions, the effects of extreme behaviors on attributions, and on how different attributional processes are relevant for making attributions about different kinds of traits.

Related research concerns impression formation and memories about the behaviors that others have performed. Other research is being conducted to gain a more complete understanding of the causes of behavior. We often find that putative causes of behaviors (e.g., attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and others), when investigated closely, are really amalgamations of more specific causes and these amalgamations are experimentally separable. There are also individual differences in the extent to which different people's behaviors are controlled by different causes.

Yet other research is informed by evolutionary and cross-cultural factors, both of which suggest some surprising problems with standard theorizing in social psychology. Finally, we have devoted recent research efforts to developing better methodological and statistical procedures for investigating social cognition phenomena. For more information about the Social Congition Lab, please contact Dr.Trafimow.