Biography
James Cavanagh is a post-doctoral scholar in the Laboratory for Neural Computation and Cognition at
Brown University.
Dr. Cavanagh’s academic career has grown from an interest in social psychology (B.A. Western Michigan
University, 2000) to an interest in psychobiological research (M.A. San Francisco State University, 2004)
and cognitive neuroscience (Ph.D. University of Arizona, 2010), finally merging with an interest in
computational neural systems (post-doc Brown University, 2010-present). This breadth of training has
led to an appreciation of how social, cognitive, emotional, and computational factors all contribute to
human behavior.
Dr. Cavanagh’s work has been supported by the National Institute for Mental Health, the National
Science Foundation, and the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
Academic Research/Areas of Interest
As a cognitive neuroscientist, Dr. Cavanagh’s research involves the measurement of cortical activities using electroencephalography (EEG) while participants perform tasks that probe specific cognitive functions. His areas of research interest include:
- Learning to seek reward and avoid punishment
- Making complex value-based decisions
- Using errors to learn and adapt behavior
- The intertwining of emotional and cognitive processes
- How psychiatric disorders reflect alterations of basic neural systems described above
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Courses
- LAEL-LE94
PSYCHOBIOLOGY OF EMOTION
Links