Chloe Green
ctgreen @ berkeley.edu
Chloe graduated from UC Davis, where she earned highest honors in Psychology. Her recent research includes an investigation of how computerized cognitive training influences children’s ability to pay attention in academic situations. She is interested in integrating insights regarding brain functioning with insights into behavior. She hopes to eventually design her own research on enhancing intellectual capability in children and adults with learning disabilities and age-related cognitive decline.
Elizabeth (Lisa) Johnson
eljohnson @ berkeley.edu
Lisa holds a bachelor’s degree with honors from the University of Chicago (BA Psychology, 2009). Broadly speaking, she is interested in the cognitive and neural underpinnings of abstract thought, from relational reasoning to creative expertise. She is also interested in the development of reasoning as it applies to delinquent behavior and policy.
Anna Luerssen
anna.luerssen @ gmail.com
Anna is a 4th year graduate student in the Psychology Department. She is interested in studying the basic processes, manifestations, and neural correlates of self regulation in adult romantic relationships and in children. Toward this end, she is currently collaborating with the Bunge lab on a project examining delay of gratification in 5-8 year olds.
Allyson Mackey
allymackey @ gmail.com
Allyson Mackey (B.S. 2006 Stanford University) is a 5th year graduate student in the Neuroscience program. She is interested in the impact of reasoning training on brain structure and function, as well as environmental factors that alter the development of prefrontal cortex.
Alison Miller Singley
atms @ berkeley.edu
Alison is a 1st year Psychology graduate student and Fellow in Research in Cognition and Mathematics Education. She is interested in the effect of training on brain structure and function, and is working with both the Education Department and Silvia Bunge to investigate how reasoning training affects math performance.
Sarah Munro
sarah.munro @ berkeley.edu
Sarah, a 4th year PhD student in the lab, received a BSc in Cognitive Neuroscience from Brown University in 2005. She is interested in what typical and atypical development can tell us about the organization of the brain. Currently, she is studying the role of Tourette Syndrome in dopamine activity, reward processing, and feedback learning. In typically developing children, she is investigating the effects of dopamine-related gene variation on learning from positive and negative feedback.
Zdena Op de Macks
zaopdemacks @ berkeley.edu
Zdena arrived in Berkeley from the Netherlands in August 2010 to become a graduate student in Psychology. While her interests are in brain development during adolescence, she is especially fascinated by the effect of pubertal hormones, like testosterone and estrogen, on adolescent brains and behavior. Her research project, in collaboration with Silvia Bunge and Ron Dahl (Department of Public Health) focuses on the relationship between pubertal hormones and the way brains process reward in the context of risky decision-making.
Kirstie Whitaker
kirstie.whitaker @ berkeley.edu
Kirstie Whitaker is a 5th year Neuroscience graduate student. She holds a BSc in Physics from the University of Bristol, UK and an MSc in Medical Physics from the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her research in the Bunge lab focuses on the development of reasoning abilities and the corresponding changes in the brain through childhood and adolescence. When she isn’t looking at MRI pictures in lab, she is following her dog’s cognitive development: teaching and competing in K9 Nosework trials.