News
September 2024
Sophie successfully defended her dissertation proposal. Congrats, Sophie!
Sophie was formally nominated for the prestigious PEO Scholar Award national competition.
July 2024
Nidhi won the best poster award at the Computational Psychiatry Conference (CPC)!
Aysenur received a travel award at the Computational Psychiatry Conference (CPC)!
May 2024
Aysenur successfully defended her dissertation proposal titled “Impulsivity during Heightened Negative Affect through Value-Based Decision-Making and Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA).” This study will empirically test the theoretical model Aysenur developed during her comprehensive exam, exploring value-based decision-making strategies that drive impulsive behaviors in response to heightened negative affect following interpersonal interactions. Congrats, Aysenur!
April 2024
Postdoc Kathy Do accepted a position as a Project Research Scientist at UCLA! Congrats, Kathy!
Aysenur was selected by faculty from among all PhD students in the department to be nominated for the Royster Society of Fellows (SOF) Dissertation Completion Fellowship and the Summer Research Fellowship offered through The Graduate School. These nominations recognize the scientific rigor and academic achievements of graduate students at the dissertation stage.
Lily Thinzar successfully defended her senior honors thesis on altered neural connectivity and emotion-related impulsivity in BPD. Congrats, Lily!
March 2024
Undergraduate RA Zach Vig will be joining the lab as a graduate student in UNC’s Quantitative Psychology program this Fall. Congrats, Zach!
Aysenur and Michael were invited to submit Aysenur’s comprehensive exam paper to the Trends in Cognitive Sciences journal!
January 2024
Nate and Michael’s paper “Automating the analysis of facial emotion expression dynamics: A computational framework and application in psychotic disorders” was accepted for publication at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences!
Kathy’s paper “Longitudinal Changes in the Value and Influence of Parent and Peer Attitudes about Externalizing Behaviors across Adolescence” has been accepted for publication at Developmental Psychology!
Michael’s paper “Reinforcement-based option competition in human dorsal stream during exploration/exploitation of a continuous space” has been accepted for publication at Science Advances!
October 2023
Nidhi Desai presented her research on the effects of social and non-social stimuli in Pavlovian-Instrumental Transfer (PIT) at the Society of Neuroeconomics (SNE) conference in Vancouver.
Sophie Paolizzi passed her comps, which explored the advantages of aversive Pavlovian to Instrumental transfer (PIT) in surmounting uncertainty in social environments. The comps also theorized about how PIT processes which minimize aversive outcomes could give rise to interpersonal dysfunction.
Macy Parmelee, our undergraduate RA, was invited to present the results of her gambling task analyses at an open interview day for Virginia Tech’s cognitive neuroscience program!
September 2023
Aysenur Okan passed her comprehensive exam proposing a novel model of negative urgency. This paper uses hierarchical reinforcement learning models to define impulsive behaviors as overgeneralized model-based responses.
August 2023
Sophie Paolizzi published a new paper in Consciousness and Cognition exploring how affective valence plays a role in judgments of control (JoC) in intentional action.
Alison Schreiber began her postdoc at the Decision Neuroscience and Psychopathology Lab at the University of Pittsburgh. Congratulations, Alison!
July 2023
Aysenur Okan published a new paper in European Psychiatry investigating a machine learning (ML) approach to classifying major depressive disorder diagnosis based on self-report measures.
June 2023
We welcome Rachel Velasquez as our new lab manager! You can read more about our newest lab member here.
November 2022
Alison Schreiber successfully defended her dissertation defense!
September 2022
We welcome Caroline Vincent as our new lab manager! You can read more about our newest lab member here.
August 2022
Aysenur Okan published a meta-analysis and systematic review in Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology showing that over-general autobiographical memory is not associated with dissociative symptoms.
July 2022
We are currently recruiting undergraduate research assistants for Fall 2022! Please fill out our Undergraduate Research Assistant Application to be considered. The deadline to apply is July 27, 2022.
April 2022
Hannah Evans, an undergraduate RA, successfully defended her senior honors thesis on the impact of stress on the balance of short-term and long-term reward using a reinforcement learning framework. Congratulations, Hannah!
July 2021
We are currently recruiting undergraduate research assistants for Fall 2021! Please fill out our Undergraduate Research Assistant Application to be considered.
June 2021
We welcome Ruofan Ma as our new graduate student, Kathy Do as our postdoc, and Will Asciutto as our research programmer to the lab! You can read more about our newest lab members here.
December 2020
We are currently recruiting undergraduate research assistants for Spring 2021! Please fill out our Undergraduate Research Assistant Application to be considered.
September 2020
We welcome our new graduate student, Aysenur, lab managers, Selin and Abbegail, and research programmer, Nidhi, to the team! We also welcome our new research assistants, Nihar, Sarah, and Ashley! You can read more about our new lab members here.
June 2020
The lab will be moving from Penn State to UNC Chapel Hill on July 1st, 2020. Dr. Hallquist has accepted an Associate Professor position in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience.
Thanks for the wonderful experiences over the past five years, Penn State!
March 2020
Along with colleagues at University of Pittsburgh, Alison Schreiber and Michael Hallquist publish new article in Journal of Abnormal Psychology examining disrupted physiological coregulation in romantic couples with personality pathology.
February 2020
Tim Allen, Alison Schreiber, Nate Hall, and Michael Hallquist publish new article in Journal of Personality Disorders arguing for explanatory models in neuroscientific studies of personality pathology.
January 2020
Alex Dombrovski, Bea Luna, and Michael Hallquist post new preprint describing the role of the hippocampus in learning from reinforcement in a structured one-dimensional space.
October 2019
Dr. Hallquist recognized as a 2019 ISSPD Young Investigator, along with Drs. Susan South and Johannes Zimmermann.
June 2019
Dr. Hallquist awarded R01 grant as part of the NIMH BRAINS program. The five-year study will examine social mechanisms of decision-making in borderline personality.
September 2018
Alison Schreiber presents research on social decision-making in borderline personality at SRP in Indianapolis.
August 2018
We welcome Tim Allen as a new postdoc in the lab!
Rick Gilmore and Michael Hallquist co-organize R bootcamp 2018.
New paper published in Network Neuroscience reviewing the use of graph theory to characterize brain disorders.
New paper published in NeuroImage on the role of incentives in modulating control-related circuitry over development.
New preprint posted reviewing the use of graph theory to characterize brain disorders.
DEPENd Lab now seeking applications for a postdoc to study decision-making in borderline personality.
Dr. Hallquist publishes new paper on MplusAutomation package for R in Structural Equation Modeling.
September 2017
New preprint posted describing how selective maintenance facilitates reinforcement learning in complex environments. DEPENd Lab publishes new paper on a decision neuroscience approach to borderline personality. Dr. Hallquist co-facilitates training workshop on longitudinal fMRI methods at the Flux Congress meeting.
Alison Schreiber presents a drift diffusion account of developmental changes in emotion regulation in borderline personality at the Flux Congress and the Society for Neuroeconomics.
Nate Hall presents on the role of dysfunctional personality traits in inhibitory control tasks using a drift diffusion model at the Society for Neuroeconomics.
August 2017
Alison Schreiber wins best student poster award at the Society for Interpersonal Theory and Research (SITAR) conference for her work on physiological coregulation in romantic couples.
Nate Hall wins the Center for Brain, Behavior, and Cognition (CBBC) student travel award from Penn State to go to Vancouver.
Along with colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh, the DEPENd Lab begins a new longitudinal study of decision-making in borderline personality, funded by NIMH.
July 2017
DEPENd Lab publishes encyclopedia entry on prototype approaches to personality disorders.
June 2017
Nate Hall presents research on the development of brain networks in borderline personality at the Organization for Human Brain Mapping meeting.