Computational Social Neuroscience Lab

Congratulations to Dr. Taylor Guthrie for successfully dissertation! Taylor has been a workhorse and an indispensable member of CSN Lab over the years. His dissertation was a masterful culmination of all of this effort.

Lucky for UO, Taylor’s giftedness and passion for teaching will stay in Eugene for the next year as he joins us as a full time instructor! Also keep an eye out for his upcoming publications from his dissertation projects which have already motivated the direction of the lab for the next several years to come.

Congratulations, Taylor 🍾

Congratulations to Dr. Moriah Stendel for being our first CSN Lab member to successfully defend her dissertation! Multiple members of her committee said it was one of the best dissertations they have ever read and a model for other students to emulate; I could not agree more.

Moriah is off next to Harvard/McLean hospital for her clinical internship, and I’m proud we could be a long stop on her journey through success.

Congratulations, Moriah 🍾

The UO Undergraduate Research Symposium is an annual event where students from all disciplines get to present research projects they have been working on in the academic year. CSN Lab is so proud of our undergrad research assistants, Debbie, Clara, and Nate, for all of the hard work on their projects as well as all of the help they bring to the lab in general.

It is worth noting that these students are neuroscience, data science, and physics majors working together in the psychology department. This is an example of the kinds of interdisciplinary teams that will be necessary for scientific advancements in the future of our field. There is so much room to do creative and interesting work when you reject these artificial disciplinary boundaries.

Congrats to you all!

If you haven’t had enough CSN Lab podcasts, there is more! Rob had a conversation with Steven Parton on his Curious Apes Podcast where he got a chance to unpack a lot of his prospective on the work being done in CSN Lab and some big picture thoughts about social neuroscience in general.

If you are looking for a sneak peek at the flavor of work in the lab, this is a great place to start!

We love listening to podcasts and several of us like being involved in them too. Here are some ones from members of the CSN Lab.

Rob was a recently guest on The Nature and Nurture Podcast, hosted by Adam Omary, a developmental social neuroscientist and PhD student at Harvard University. This wide ranging conversation covered broad topics from personality neuroscience to evolutionary theory to AI to consciousness.
On YouTube
On Spotify

Former CSN Lab Manager and current licensed Oregon psilocybin facilitator, Jack Kapustka, was a guest on the Psiloquium Podcast, discussing the science of psychedelics. It’s one of the most level-headed interview about this topic you can find anywhere.
On Spotify

And, of course, CSN Lab graduate student Taylor Guthrie has not only been a guest on a podcast but is a host of his own called The Social Brain. There, he and his co-host cover a broad range of topics in psychology and neuroscience in a very approachable style that is geared towards broader audiences. You can find all of the episodes of his podcast on his YouTube channel and on Spotify.
On YouTube
On Spotify

Amazing news from our superstar CSN Lab undergrad, Debbie Okeke! She was accepted into not one but two competitive summer research program at OHSU and will be working this summer at the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) with Dr. Kathy Grant who studies primate models of addiction.

We are so excited for Debbie and all of her success; OHSU will be lucky to have her.

Congrats, Debbie!

Our beloved undergraduate RA, Clara Morrison, presented at their first conference their first conference! Clara has been working on fixing slice timing acquisition issues from one of our latest studies and got to talk about all of their efforts at the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) at Stanford this past weekend.

Psychology is often accused of having physics envy. Here in CSN Lab, we don’t worry about such silly things and just invite the physicists on board with us. 🙂

We’re all so stoked for you, Clara!

CSN Lab said goodbye to our beloved lab manager Jack Kapustka and celebrated the end of the 2022/2023 academic year in June. So much was accomplished this year by current and former lab members, from completing the first year of college, to graduate school acceptances, to advancement to PhD candidacy. Lots to be proud of, and cheers to all.

After a long COVID-induced drought, CSN Lab had our first presence at in-person conferences in several years! So reinvigorating to learn what is going on in the field and be able to share our work with everyone.

Moriah Stendel presented her poster “Distributed and Specific Brain Systems Underlying Interpersonal Perception and Self-Evaluation” at the Society of Affective Science meeting in Long Beach, CA.

Taylor Guthrie presented his poster “Dyadic Neural Representations of Personal Narratives” a the Social & Affective Neuroscience meeting in Santa Barbara, CA.

CSN Lab’s graduate student Taylor Guthrie has been selected by UO Department of Psychology a recipient of this year’s Distinguished Teaching Award! Taylor has always had a passion for teaching and he absolutely shines as an educator. Need proof? You can find a sample of his lectures on Cognitive Neuroscience and other high quality learning material on his popular YouTube channel.

Congrats to Taylor!