Rehabilitation Neuroscience (Scott Frey) - Current research activities in the Frey Lab focus on furthering our understanding of the neural bases of manual actions and exploring the implications of these findings for improving neurorehabilitation:

1) Effects of upper limb immobility, loss, or congenital absence on the organization of sensory and motor structures;

2) Roles of visual, somatosensory and cognitive inputs in the organization and reorganization of limb representations;

3) Neural bases of human tool use and gesture;

4) Organization of parieto-frontal networks involved in reaching, grasping and saccadic eye movements; and,

5) Observational learning of manual procedures.

Project Lean (Eric Stice, Oregon Research Institute) – Funded by the National Institute on Mental Health, this research study is designed to help young women lose weight and improve their attitudes and behaviors towards a healthier lifestyle. Investigators are conducting a randomized trial of an enhanced version of the Healthy Weight program, an obesity prevention program that in preliminary studies was shown to reduce the rate of obesity onset, eating disorder symptoms, and negative affect among female adolescents.

Empathy (Jean Decety, University of Chicago) – This study is designed to explore the automatic and control competence underpinning the experience of empathy and its neural coding in the perception of pain in others. Additional information is available at http://home.uchicago.edu/~decety/

Early Experience (Phillip Fisher) - This pilot study will examine differences in brain structure and function in foster children and community children. The study will investigate the effects of early life stress, specifically multiple caregiver transitions, on the structure of specific brain regions and activation of specific brain regions during an inhibitory control task using fMRI technology.

Early Reading Ability: Letter processing (Helen Neville) - This project examines the development of early reading ability, specifically of visual letter processing, in kindergarteners (~5 year olds). Changes in functional activations related to letter processing at the beginning and end of the first term are compared.

MRI Hardware Development Members of the Lewis Center are actively involved in developing custom hardware for improved MR Imaging. more...

Publications Read various essays and presentations produced by LCNI staff. more...