The Hubbard Electrophysiology of Cognition Laboratory (The HECL; pronounced "The Heckle") at the University at Albany is interested in the link between the human mind and the brain, and primarily investigates this link by recording electroencephalography (EEG) and changes in pupil dilation as individuals complete cleverly designed psychological experiments.
Research in the HECL is currently primarily focused on:
Prediction - How does the brain generate expectations about upcoming events, or pre-activate features of upcoming stimuli? When are these predictions generated? What are the downstream consequences of violations of our expectations?
Memory - How is the creation and retrieval of our memories for previous events impacted by confirmation or violation of our predictions? Conversely, how does our memory or prior knowledge about the world impact our predictions of upcoming events?
Language Comprehension - Prediction impacts real-time comprehension of language. As a sentence or discourse unfolds, what exactly does the brain generate in advance? At what levels (semantic, orthographic, etc.) are these predictions generated?
Aging - How does natural aging influence the predictions that individuals generate, and how do these changes relate to individual differences in language and memory comprehension abilities?
Check out the newly published article, "Probing Prediction‐Related Processes in Language Using an EEG Word Stem Completion Paradigm."
Sam Zinssar has joined the HECL as a graduate research assistant! Welcome to the lab, Sam!