The People of the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center

Who Am I?

Dan received his A.B. from Vassar College in May 2009, with a concentration in Cognitive Science and an independent sub-concentration in The Functions of Emotion. His senior thesis was titled "Functional Relationships Among Anxiety, Self-Imagery, and Visual Attention in Social Experience," and involved an independently designed experiment using eye-tracking technology and a sham social interaction. From 2006 to 2009 Dan worked in the lab of Jan Andrews and Ken Livingston in Vassar's Psychology Department and Cognitive Science Program, investigating how humans learn novel categories. As part of this research he served as an Undergraduate Research Summer Institute Fellow for the summer of 2007. The lab's studies contrasted cognitive learning processes exhibited for categories differentiated on one versus two dimensions and categories defined by verbal versus non-verbal labels. Dan gained some clinical experience as a Project Health Care Volunteer in Bellevue Hospital's Emergency Department in the summer of 2008, where he conducted research on ER services, gave ECGs, and shadowed health professionals. Just before coming to the Olin Center in August 2009, Dan was a Summer Intern at the Project for Psychiatric Outreach to the Homeless in Harlem, New York. Dan plans to pursue a doctoral degree in scientific research and clinical practice concerning developmental psychopathology and the neuroscience of emotional development.

Roles and Responsibilities

Dan works in the COBBRA lab on three experiments: Bipolar Schizophrenia Consortium on Intermediate Phenotypes; Quantitative Neuroimaging in Psychosis; and Schizophrenia Biomarkers: Memory, Genes, and fMRI. His major duties are to administer clinical interviews and neuropsychological tests, assist with MRI, EEG, pre-pulse inhibition, and eye-tracking sessions, take DNA samples, and organize data.

Presentations

Andrews, J., Livingston, K., Sturm, J., Bliss, D., & Hawthorne, D. (2009, October). Category learning research in the interactive online environment Second Life. Paper presented at the third annual international ModSim World Conference and Expo, Virginia Beach, VA.

Andrews, J., Livingston, K., Bliss, D., & Vlahovic, T. (2008, July). Effects of category learning on similarity of line stimuli representing social groups. Poster session presented at the 30th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Washington, DC.