معرفی
Sharon Thompson-Schill is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, co-director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. Her research focuses on the neural bases of human cognition, particularly the interplay between perception, memory, language, and cognitive control. She explores how semantic knowledge is organized, retrieved, and influenced by frontal lobe functions. Her lab employs methods like fMRI, TMS, and eye-tracking to study both typical and atypical populations.
- Education:
- BA in Psychology, Davidson College
- Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology, Stanford University
Research interests emphasize frontal lobe roles in regulating thought and behavior, semantic memory organization, and the neural substrates of concept formation. Recent work includes studies on creative idea generation via prefrontal stimulation, statistical learning of causal properties, and the impact of value perception on visual processing.
Key contributions include identifying neural mechanisms of semantic retrieval and demonstrating how conceptual knowledge influences perceptual and linguistic systems. Her lab has pioneered methods to map neural variability in concept representations.
- Awards:
- Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society
- Fellow of the Society of Experimental Psychologists
- Psychonomic Society Mid-Career Award
Advising & Collaboration: Supervises postdocs (e.g., Anna Leshinskaya, Elizabeth Karuza) and graduate students (e.g., Tima Zeng). Active in mentoring and teaching courses like PSYC 149 (Cognitive Neuroscience).
Labs & Teams: Leads a multidisciplinary lab integrating behavioral, neuroimaging, and computational approaches. Collaborates on projects involving genetic analysis and network control theory to understand cognitive flexibility.
