Undergrad Research Asst. Positions

Project Title: The Brain and Emotion: Neuroimaging

Faculty Name: Shackman, Alex

Project Description: 

TEACHING AND MENTORSHIP: The overarching mission of the lab is to have a deep impact on the fields of affective and translational neuroscience. To that end, we do our best to perform innovative studies that can lead to important discoveries, to disseminate our discoveries as widely as possible, and to mentor trainees to become top-notch scientists. My aim is to understand the interplay of emotion and cognition, with a particular focus on characterizing the impact of individual differences in anxiety on attention, memory, and cognitive control. Most of our research is geared toward identifying the mechanisms that link high levels of anxiety to the development of psychopathology, including the identification of novel brain-based biomarkers and transdiagnostic endophenotypes. If you are looking for a lab to join as an undergraduate research assistant, please email shackman@umd.edu . We are always looking for people who are smart, productive, sensible, passionate, rigorous, fearless in the face of technical and logistical challenges, hardworking, blessed with a creative vision, and who can actively contribute to a positive lab environment (fun!). The lab provides an excellent opportunity for receiving top-notch mentorship in affective/translational neuroscience. My goal is to ensure that all of my trainees are happy and cultivate the range of skills necessary to secure positions at top-tier universities. We are especially interested in students with expertise in programming, computer science, electrical engineering, IT, or Matlab. 

RESEARCH OVERVIEW: Anxiety disorders are a leading source of suffering in children and adults. These disorders first emerge early in life, are extremely common, and often resist treatment. Individuals with an anxious temperament -- those who express anxiety too intensely or in inappropriate contexts -- are much more likely to develop anxiety and other serious psychiatric disorders, including depression and substance abuse. To understand the substrates of this liability, we use a broad spectrum of tools, including multimodal brain imaging, peripheral physiological measures, and behavioral assays. Our laboratory is particularly focused on characterizing the mechanisms by which anxiety alters the processing of threats and punishments in a way that enhances the likelihood of maladaptive avoidance and behavioral inhibition. Clinically, this work promises to enhance our understanding of how emotional traits and states modulate risk, facilitate the discovery of novel endophenotypes and biomarkers, and set the stage for developing improved interventions. From a basic psychological science perspective, our research begins to address fundamental questions about the interplay of emotion and cognition and the nature of personality. 

RESEARCH THEMES: Dr. Shackman's major research interests include affective and cognitive neuroscience; neural bases of threat processing, anxiety, fear, and their application to anxiety, mood, and related psychiatric disorders; neural bases of personality and individual differences in anxiety and behavioral inhibition; cognition × emotion interactions: interactions of anxiety and higher cognition (cognitive control, selective attention, and working memory); developmental psychopathology; amygdala; anterior cingulate cortex (ACC); prefrontal cortex (PFC). 

KEY METHODS: Key methods used by our lab include multimodal neuroimaging (fMRI, PET, VBM); electrophysiological techniques (ERP/EEG, LORETA source modeling), peripheral physiological techniques (cortisol, facial EMG, fear-potentiated startle), and behavioral assays (economic games and experience sampling). Populations of interest include children, adolescents, healthy adults, and psychiatric patients. 

BACKGROUND: Dr. Shackman received his Ph.D. in Biological Psychology with a distributed minor in Neuroscience from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008. His graduate research was supported by the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Mental Health. He subsequently conducted postdoctoral research in the laboratories of Richard Davidson, Brad Postle, and Ned Kalin in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at Wisconsin. He serves as an Associate Editor at Cognition and Emotion; Frontiers in Human Neuroscience; and Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience (CABN). Dr. Shackman joined the faculty at UMD in the summer of 2013.