Current Research and Scholarly Interests
I work with event-related brain potentials (ERPs), a functional brain imaging tool, giving millisecond to millisecond temporal information about sensory and cognitive processes. Recently, I have been combining functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) techniques with ERP data to provide high spatial resolution information about cortical sources of the various components of the ERP. ERPs enable assessment of cognition even in the absence of overt behavior, making them an ideal tool for understanding clinical groups in whom responses are unreliable or difficult to acquire. To understand how patients with schizophrenia experience auditory hallucinations, we are using fMRI and ERPs to probe the brain during periods with and without hallucinations. To understand the role of self-monitoring deficits in symptoms of schizophrenia, we are using ERP paradigms that elicit a negative wave in normal subjects when they realize they have made a mistake.
