Breaking Through the Social Sciences

Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience,

Antonio Damasio had an exceptional 2014, in which

he received the most prestigious honor in the field of

psychology, the Grawemeyer Award, for his major

influence in contemporary psychology, as well as in

the fields of neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry and

philosophy. While the Grawemeyer would have been

the crowning achievement for any psychologist who

won it that year, a couple months later, the APA pub-

lished an article in the Archives of Scientific Psychol-

ogy, naming Damasio one of the 100 most eminent

psychologists of the modern era.

Needless to say, if you thought he might slow

down in 2015, you were very wrong. Damasio has

published nine articles and three book chapters this

year, ranging from topics on homeostasis and its ap-

plication on economics, to neural correlates of grati-

tude. He has been traveling all over the world, col-

lecting honorary degrees and making lectures in Por-

tugal, France, Switzerland, Italy, Mexico, Canada,

and throughout the United States. Recently, Antonio

Damasio has been named by the Sciences Humaines

in its list of the “50 key thinkers in the human scienc-

es of the past two centuries.” Between the two lists,

he finds himself alongside names such as: Albert

Bandura, Jean Piaget, Sigmund Freud, and Charles

Darwin. His work has now been cited over 32,000

times and his research has received continuous Feder-

al funding for over 30 years.

SPRING 2015 WINTER 2015

Damasio is a member of the American Acade-

my of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of

Sciences' Institute of Medicine, and the European

Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is the recipient of

several prizes, amongst them the Grawemeyer

Award, the Honda Prize, the Prince of Asturias

Award in Science and Technology and the Beaumont

Medal from the American Medical Association. He

has also received honorary doctorates from the Uni-

versities of Sorbonne, Aachen, Copenhagen, Leiden,

Barcelona, Coimbra, Leuven and numerous others.

When Damasio isn’t too busy traveling

around the world accepting awards, giving TED

Talks, or making television and radio appearances,

he is hard at work here at USC, co-directing the USC

Dornsife Brain and Creativity Institute with his wife

and colleague, Dr. Hannah Damasio. The Damasio’s

have made seminal contributions to the understand-

ing of brain processes underlying emotions, feelings,

decision-making, and consciousness. For more infor-

mation on the Brain and Creativity Institute, please

visit the website at <www.usc.edu/bci>.

Dr. Hanna Damasio and Dr. Antonio Damasio

(pictured above) received honorary degrees this sum-

mer from the Université Paris Descartes, more widely

known as the Sorbonne. The Sorbonne is one of the

pioneering institutions in the field of psychology and

is home to many psychologists who have helped to

create and shape the field—most notably Alfred Bi-

net and Jean Piaget.

Berntsen L., & Baker, L. A. (2015). Defiant behavior during adolescence across cultures. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), Inter-

national encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (second edition), volume 6 (pp. 7-11). New York: Elsevier.

Cunningham, S. I., Weiland, J. D., Bao, P., Lopez-Jaime, G. R., & Tjan, B. S. (2015). Correlation of vision loss with

tactile-evoked V1 responses in retinitis pigmentosa. Vision Research, 111, Part B, 197–207. http://doi.org/10.1016/

j.visres.2014.10.015.

Droutman, V., Bechara, A. & Read, S.J. (2015). Roles of the different sub-regions of the insular cortex in various

phases of the decision-making process. Front. Behavioral Neuroscience. 9:309. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00309.

Droutman, V., Read, S.J. & Bechara, A. (2015). Revisiting the role of the insula in addiction. Trends in cognitive sci-

ences 19.7, 414-420.

Files, B. T., Tjan, B. S., Jiang, J., & Bernstein, L. E. (2015). Visual speech discrimination and identification of natu-

ral and synthetic consonant stimuli. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(878). http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00878.

Immordino-Yang, M.H. (November, 2015) Emotions, Learning and the Brain: Exploring the educational implications

of affective neuroscience. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Kammen, A., Law, M., Tjan, B. S., Toga, A. W., & Shi, Y. (2016). Automated retinofugal visual pathway reconstruc-

tion with multi-shell HARDI and FOD-based analysis. NeuroImage, 125, 767–779. http://doi.org/10.1016/

j.neuroimage.2015.11.005.

Karlsson, I.K., Bennet, A.M., Ploner, A., Andersson, T., Reynolds, C.A., Gatz, M., & Pedersen, N.L. (2015).

Apolipoprotein E ɛ4 genotype and the temporal relationship between depression and dementia. Neurobiology of Ag-

ing, 36, 1751-1756.

Koritzky G, Rice C, Dieterle C & Bechara A (2015). The Biggest Loser Thinks Long-Term: Recency as a Predictor

of Success in Weight Management. Front. Psychol. 6, 1864. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01864 .

Martins, B., Ponzio, A., Velasco, R., Kaplan, J., & Mather, M. (2015). Dedifferentiation of emotion regula-

tion strategies in the aging brain. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10, 840-847. http://

scan.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/nsu129?%0Aijkey=R5wZBPloC3zNN7i&keytype=ref .

Nielsen, S.E., Barber, S. J., Chai, A., Clewett, D. V., & Mather, M. (2015). Sympathetic arousal increases a negative

memory bias in young women with low sex hormone levels. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 62, 96-106. http://

www.usc.edu/matherlab/pdfs/NielsenBarberetal2015.pdf.

Scurich, N., Nguyen, K., & John, R. (2015). Quantifying the presumption of innocence. Law, Probability and Risk, 1-

16. doi:10.1093/lpr/mgv016.

Tuvblad, C., Dhamija, D., Berntsen, L., Raine, A., & Liu, J. (2015). Cross-cultural validation of the Reactive-

Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ) using four large samples from the US, Hong Kong, and China. Journal of

Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment. Advance online publication. doi:10.1007/s10862-015-9501-2.

If you have submissions for the Department of Psychology Newsletter, please email Daniel Paris <dparis@usc.edu>.

Remember to check the calendar on the front page of the department website for all upcoming events!

Dr. Gerald Davidson was honored with a new fund created by several of his former students

in order to recognize Davison’s contributions as a research advisor, clinical instructor, and mentor.

The Gerald C. Davison Award for Excellence in Exemplifying the Boulder Model will be given

annually to a student in the USC Clinical Science program who has made a superior contribution

to applying psychological knowledge in their clinical work.

Dr. Bosco Tjan received a grant from the National Institute of Health for a study on the rela-

tionships between retinal pathologies and their downstream impact on the central visual pathway

of the human brain over the natural courses of blinding diseases and their treatments.

2015/9-2019/8 (PI, U01) NEI/NIH. Human Connectomes for Low Vision, Blindness, and Sight

Restoration. $2,747,327 direct, $1,285,223 F&A. [NIH U01EY025864]

Dr. Norbert Schwarz was awarded the 2015 Oswald Külpe Pr ize. Oswald Külpe paved the

way for numerous important developments, from Gestalt psychology to modern cognitive science.

Every three years the University of Würzburg awards the Oswald Külpe Prize to a researcher who

has made exceptional experimental and theoretical contributions to the understanding of higher

mental processes.

Dr. Donna Spruijt-Metz received the Obesity Society’s annual Pioneer Award for excellence

in eHealth/mHeath research.

Sptuijt-Metz is the director of the Mobile Health (mHealth) Collaboratory at USC Dornsife’s Cen-

ter for Social and Economic Research. Her work meshes 21st century technologies with transdisci-

plinary metabolic, behavioral, and environmental research to fight childhood obesity.

Dr. Kean Hsu, (recent graduate) was awarded 1st place for his poster at the 49th Annual

Convention of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) in Chicago.

His poster, "Compounded Deficits: The association between neuropsychological impairment and

attention biases in currently depressed, formerly depressed, and never depressed individuals" was

based on his dissertation under the direction of Dr. Gerald Davison.

Addie Timmons (Clinical Science) received a 2015 APA American Psychological Association

Dissertation Research Award for her dissertation project titled: Romantic Partners’ Physiological

and Emotional Coregulation in the Home Environment.

Addie is a fourth year graduate student under Dr. Gayla Margolin. Her research interests include:

Couple dynamics, parent-child conflict, coregulation, and psychophysiology.

The annual Psyched 4 Jobs conference organized by the Master’s of Applied Psy-

chology program attracted over one-hundred undergraduate attendees this year

from several different universities in Southern California. In addition to conduct-

ing popular resume workshops, the students brought in speakers from entertain-

ment, consulting, and government industries to discuss how they leverage their

psychology degrees in their professions. In particular, two USC alums were fea-

tured panelists: Kendra Keyse (’12), and Laila Ajabi (’10).

Research Spotlight

The NEST Lab, directed by Dr. Darby Saxbe

(captured above, as she leads a lab meeting), aims to

take a biopsychosocial perspective on the understand-

ing of health and well-being in the context of family

and peer relationships. Dr. Saxbe is interested in how

nature and nurture intersect – how early experiences

shape the development of emotion regulation, stress

responding, and social perception, and how these

phenomena influence subsequent psychosocial func-

tioning. The lab looks at questions like, “How does

everyday family life affect stress hormones?” and

“Do people who live together show synchrony in

their fluctuations of cortisol?”

The NEST Lab is currently working on sever-

al projects, including the HATCH (Hormones, AT-

tachment, and CHildbirth) study, which looks at how

the brain and body prepare for parenting. More spe-

cifically, the study explores how couples' cortisol and

oxytocin levels change over pregnancy, how social

support affects subjective birth experiences and peri-

natal medical interventions, and what neural and hor-

monal factors are associated with postpartum attach-

ment. The lab is also working on an ongoing neu-

roimaging study looking at regions of the brain asso-

ciated with theory of mind, mentalizing, and social

perception to see how adolescents view themselves.

You can find more about these projects, publi-

cations, and other details about the NEST Lab, on

their website: <http://dornsife.usc.edu/nestlab>.

The NEST Lab (as seen below) is one of the

most active labs in the Department of Psychology.

Aside from Dr. Saxbe, there are four graduate stu-

dents, a lab manager, and a dozen more undergraduate

students who are actively contributing to the lab at

any given time. Due to the lab’s incorporated neu-

roimaging research, it is also known for its collabora-

tion with the Dornsife Brain and Creativity Institute,

as well as with other professors at USC, such as: Gay-

la Margolin, Larissa Borofsky, Mary Helen Immordi-

no-Yang, Jonas Kaplan, and Xiao-Fei Yang.

As a result of the fascinating topics and

groundbreaking research being worked on in the

NEST Lab, Dr. Saxbe has become one of the most

sought after graduate advisors for perspective stu-

dents. She also works with the highest number of un-

dergraduate honors students on their independent re-

search projects. Veronica Gempis, senior honors stu-

dent, explains that, “Dr. Saxbe is an incredible men-

tor. Aside from completing an honors thesis, I have

been able to participate in great learning experiences,

such as cutting placenta samples and collecting hair

samples from newborns in the hospital.” Her research

has also inspired a new undergraduate course in the

department called Stress, Health, and the Mind-Body

Connection. In its third year being offered, this course

has become so popular, it is one of the first in the de-

partment to reach capacity each semester.