People
Teal Eich, Lab Director
Teal is an Assistant Professor of Gerontology and Psychology. She is a cognitive neuroscientist whose research explores age-related changes to executive function. She is particularly interested in the neural mechanisms supporting cognitive inhibition, and understanding how morphological changes to neuroanatomy affect the ability to successfully inhibit information across different levels (during response, when selectively attending to stimuli, and in memory). She uses behavioral and neuroimaging (structural- and functional-MRI) methods to probe these interactions in healthy younger and older adults, and in individuals at risk for developing neurologic disorders including Alzheimer’s Disease based on biologic and genetic risk factors.
Contact: teich@usc.edu
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Ali Pournaghdali, Postdoctoral Fellow
Ali received his PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Florida International University, where he focused on improving the behavioral assessments of perceptual awareness and metacognitive experiences using unidimensional and multidimensional extensions of signal detection theory. After receiving his PhD, he joined the Lifespan Cognition Lab, where he is studying inhibitory processes as well as metacognitive monitoring in older adults. More specifically, he is interested in evaluating the impact of aging on the accuracy and efficiency of different metacognitive processes at evaluating memory and perceptual decisions, especially when the decisions happen in the presence of a cognitive conflict. To answer these questions he uses signal detection theory and one of its multidimensional extensions called general recognition theory as well as different variants of drift diffusion model.
Joan Jimenez-Balado, PhD, Collaborator
Joan is a cognitive and computational neuroscientist interested in studying the vascular contribution to the aging brain. He started his career doing a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the Vall d’Hebron Hospital (Neurovascular, Barcelona), where he explored how cerebral small vessel disease affects cognition. He then did a first postdoctoral fellowship at the Lifespan cognition lab (University of Southern California, Los Angeles), trying to disentangle how complex mappings of cerebrovascular lesions correlate to specific clinical phenotypes. He then moved to the Institut d’Investigacions Mèdiques Hospital del Mar (Neurovascular, Barcelona), where he is currently integrating multi-modal data (genetics and neuroimaging) to improve the prediction, understanding and prognosis of cerebrovascular diseases.
Jessie (Chih-Yuan) Chien, Graduate Student (Gerontology)
Jessie is a PhD student in the Davis School of Gerontology. She is currently investigating the underlying cognitive mechanisms of age-related differences in memory specificity, such as how memorial interference due to similarity can be reduced via inhibitory mechanisms. In the next steps, she aims to study the potential role of memory specificity in valued-based decision making using both behavioral and neuroimaging methods.
Before coming to USC, she received her M.A. in Psychology from Brandeis University (Master’s thesis advisor: Dr. Angela Gutchess) and a B.S. in Psychology from Penn State University.
Contact: chihyuan@usc.edu
Jillian Joyce, Graduate Student (Neuroscience)
Anya Vincent, Research Associate
Anya is an alumna of USC, who has a MSG degree as well as a B.S. in Neuroscience. She is interested in pursuing a PhD in Cognitive Science. Her research interests include understanding the brain as it ages, with an emphasis on Alzheimer’s Disease.
Sush Chopra, Undergraduate Research Assistant
Sush is a senior majoring in Biological Sciences and minoring in Science, Health, and Aging. Her goal is to apply to medical school and become a physician. Through her work as an RA for the SAGE study as well as volunteering in the ER and VA clinic, her passion for understanding the intricate relationship between hormones and the aging process drives her work, which promises to shed light on critical aspects of elderly healthcare.
Hannah Makkai, Undergraduate Research Assistant
Hannah is a Senior at the University of Southern California, majoring in Lifespan Health, and minoring in Psychology. She is interested in either becoming a physician’s assistant or a clinical psychologist. Through either profession, her intention is to continue to work with older adults and their cognition. As well as her research position as part of the Lifespan Cognition’s SOFIA and SAGE studies, she also has a position at Belmont Senior Living where she works with older adults who have sever cognitive impairments.
Blanca Diaz, Undergraduate Research Assistant
Blanca is a senior at the University of Southern California who is majoring in Health and Human Sciences as well as minoring in Cultural Competence in Medicine. Her interest in partaking in research with The Lifespan Cognition Lab stems from her volunteer experience with Adventist Health Hospice where she became more cognizant of the sex differences associated with Alzheimer’s disease. That said, Blanca intends to become a physician, and she aims to continue to further her understanding of the needs of older adults to ultimately improve their overall health and well-being.
Temi Ogunade, Undergraduate Research Assistant
Temi is a second-year University of Southern California student majoring in Neuroscience with a passion for writing and literature through USC’s Thematic Option Honors Program. She is committed to bridging current neuroscience research advances and patient experiences with taboo mental illnesses such as depression, ADHD, and eating disorders in minority populations. Specifically, she is interested in research that explains how collective consciousness as reflected through digital media affects one’s self perception as an African American adolescent.
Contact: togunade@usc.edu
Lily Muñoz, MS, Research Assistant
Lily is a recent graduate from the MSG program and intends to pursue a PhD in gerontology in the future. She is currently a clinical research coordinator at UCSF. Her research interests include creating new interventions to improve quality of life for older adults with neurodegenerative diseases and using neuroimaging to further understand genetic risk factor in developing Alzheimer’s Disease.
