Seana Coulson

Seana Coulson is a Professor and Jeff Elman Chancellor's Endowed Chair in Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego. She is affiliated with the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind (KIBM). Her research focuses on cognitive electrophysiology, conceptual blending, metaphor comprehension, and gesture comprehension, with a particular interest in the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying meaning construction. Coulson has held academic roles since 1997, including Assistant Professor (1999-2005) and Associate Professor (2005-2010) at UC San Diego.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Cognitive Science, UC San Diego (1997)
• M.S. Cognitive Science, UC San Diego (1992)
• B.A. Philosophy, Wellesley College (1988, Magna Cum Laude)

Research Interests:

• Cognitive electrophysiology and ERP studies
• Conceptual blending theory and its applications to metaphor, humor, and rhetoric
• Gesture comprehension and multimodal discourse
• Synesthesia and embodied cognition
• Right hemisphere contributions to language processing

Labs and Teams: She leads the Brain & Cognition Laboratory, investigating neural processes in language and reasoning, with a focus on ERPs and behavioral measures. Collaborators include David Brang, Jennifer Collins, and Tristan Davenport. The lab explores topics like gesture-speech integration, metaphor comprehension, and synesthesia.