Daniel Krawczyk

Daniel Krawczyk is the Debbie and Jim Francis Chair in Behavioral Brain Sciences and a Professor of Psychology at The University of Texas at Dallas, jointly appointed at the UT Southwestern Medical Center. He leads the Reasoning Lab and serves as Deputy Director at the Center for BrainHealth. His research focuses on cognitive processes underlying reasoning, decision-making, and social cognition, using methods like fMRI, pupillometry, and virtual reality. He explores how attention, memory, and biases interact with decision-making, particularly in contexts like radicalization and echo chambers. His work extends to brain stimulation (tPBM) for cognitive enhancement and cognitive rehabilitation post-traumatic brain injury (TBI). Krawczyk holds a PhD from UCLA and has authored the book Reasoning: The Neuroscience of How We Think. He has received over $5 million in DOD grants and teaches courses in reasoning at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

Education: PhD in Psychology/Cognitive Science from UCLA (2003), MA in Cognitive Neuroscience (2000), and BA in Psychology from SUNY Fredonia (1998). Postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley under Dr. Mark D'Esposito.

Research emphasizes neural mechanisms of decision-making biases (e.g., framing effects, confirmation bias) and applied interventions targeting cognitive deficits. Current projects include using tPBM to improve prefrontal cortex function and developing virtual reality tools for social skill training in autism. He has published over 100 papers and presented at major conferences, including TEDx and the Perot Museum.

Awards include the APA Dissertation Award (2002) and DOD recognition (2015). He serves on editorial boards for Biological Psychiatry and Neuroimage. Active grants include DOD-funded studies on TBI recovery and DARPA projects mapping the social brain's neural basis.