Associate Professor
Department of Psychology and Institute for Neuroscience

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison (2010)
jalewpea@utexas.edu | CV

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley (2018)
elizabethlorenc@utexas.edu

"My research focuses on understanding how the healthy brain maintains precise visual working memory representations, particularly through subsequent interference. In addition, I hope to understand what neural factors may underlie memory failures, and my current postdoctoral work seeks to establish whether interventions like real-time neurofeedback can be used to manipulate working memory and long-term memory outcomes."

Psychology (5th year)
B.S., University of Missouri at St. Louis (2016)
remym@utexas.edu | Website

"I'm interested in how memories interact with perception. I also like to study lucid dreaming."

Neuroscience (5th year), co-advised: Joey Dunsmoor
B.S., The College of William and Mary (2016)
achennings@utexas.edu | Website

"The broad goal of my Ph.D. is to leverage insights from episodic memory research to better understand emotional associative learning. My work focuses on fear extinction as an experimental model of exposure therapy. Decades of research and clinical accounts demonstrate that fear often returns after safety learning, and in extreme cases this can manifest as clinical disorders such as PTSD. My research applies modern cognitive neuroscience techniques such as MVPA and machine learning to better understand fear extinction in both healthy and clinical populations."

Psychology (4th year)
B.S., Mississippi State University (2017)
abruning@utexas.edu

"My work focuses on the interactions between working and long-term memory. Specifically, I am interested in how previous knowledge influences what we maintain in working memory, and how those representations can also influence the strength of the long-term memory representation."

Mechanical Engineering (3rd year), co-advised: James Sulzer
B.S., University of Tennessee, Knoxville (2018)
jkilmarx@utexas.edu

"Motor deficits, such as the ability to individuate finger movements, is a common impairment associated with stroke that often never reaches full recovery. Here, we use hyperalignment to create a neural template of ideal brain activity from healthy participants. Our goal is to use this template to guide recovery in a real-time fMRI neurofeedback experiment post-stroke."

Neuroscience (2nd year)
B.A., Boston University (2015)
zbretton@utexas.edu

"My interest is in exploring the role of our emotional state on our memory systems. Specifically, I am interested in the ways in which persistent mental illness can greatly affect our working memory capabilities and our ability to deal with the daily challenges of an information rich life."