Social Cognitive and Addiction Neuroscience Lab (SCANlab)

Two new R01 grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism were awarded to Bartholow.

The first project (funded by R01AA030728) will be conducted at the SCANlab’s University of Iowa location and will examine factors that can increase or decrease the likelihood that teenagers and young adults will experience problems related to drinking alcohol. The primary purpose of this study is to increase our understanding of when and how underlying causes of alcohol-related problems emerge during adolescence. Findings from this study could lead to the development of more effective interventions that might reduce or prevent problems linked to heavy drinking. For more information, visit the Card Study website.

The second project (funded by R01AA030914) will be conducted at the University of Missouri in collaboration with Dr. Denis McCarthy’s Alcohol Cognitions Lab and Dr. Clintin Davis-Stober’s Decision-Making and Data Science Lab. This project will rigorously test the factors that increase the risk of negative drinking consequences as people transition from underage drinking to legal drinking. The first 12 months following the transition to the minimum legal drinking age (currently, age 21 in the U.S.) is associated with an increase in negative drinking consequences, especially DUI arrests. This study will try to understand why that occurs and the factors that predict who is most likely to experience these consequences.

Sandie Keerstock is joining the A&S Office of Research and Creative Activities (ORCA) at the University of Missouri! Liam Peck, who has been a research assistant in the SCANlab for the past two years, will be stepping in as Research Coordinator for the lab at Mizzou. Welcome Liam!

The SCANlab PI, Dr. Bartholow, has accepted a new position as the Ketchel Family Chair and Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Iowa (UI). Thus, beginning in fall 2023, part of the SCANlab will be moving to UI.

However, for at least the next year, the SCANlab also will continue to operate at the University of Missouri (MU).

The ongoing CLAS study will continue at the MU location, and a new study will begin at the MU location this fall.

Stay tuned for further updates!

SCANlab undergraduate lab members presented their independent research projects at the 2023 edition of the Undergraduate Research Week.

At the 62nd annual meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research on Oct 1, 2022, Dr. Bruce Bartholow delivered the Presidential Address for the year 2020-2021 titled Salience And Cognitive Control: Inter- And Intra-Individual Differences And Implications For Social And Clinical Behavior.

The SCANlab was represented at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society For Psychophysiological Research (SPR), which took place Sept 28-Oct 2 in Vancouver, BC, Canada

The SCANlab was represented at the 2022 annual convention of the American Psychological Association (APA), which took place Aug 4-6 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Postdoctoral Fellow for 4 years in the SCANlab, Dr. Cofresi received a prestigious NIH-NIAAA K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Career Award and was promoted to Research Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri.

The SCANlab was well represented at the 45th annual RSA meeting held in Orlando FL this year (2022).

At graduation, we celebrated the achievements of our research assistants Devon Terry, Gage Crum, Mikayla Rodgers and Emma G. Johnson. They have worked hard and have impressive achievements to their credit. After completing their Bachelor degrees, they are going in new and interesting directions:

The 2022 edition of the Undergraduate Research Week at MU saw 3 SCANlab undergraduate lab members, Devon Terry, Gage Crum, and Makayla Pollock, present their independent research, as well as Research Coordinator Dr. Sandie Keerstock nominated for the Outstanding Undergraduate Mentor of the Year Award!

Research plans are already forming for AY 2022-2023! Two SCANlab research assistants, Ian Flowers and Liam Peck (both Psychology Major), will be doing their Honors Thesis with Drs. Bartholow/Cofresi. In addition, Ian Flowers was accepted into the McNair Scholar program 2022-2023 with Dr. Bartholow as his mentor. Congratulations to both, and looking forward to their independent research!

The article features experts on the science of addiction, MU Professor Dr. Kenneth Sher and SCANlab postdoctoral fellow Dr. Roberto Cofresi, who weigh in on how HBO’s ‘Euphoria’ depicts addiction.

Dr. Bartholow’s talk at Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) was titled: Share the Wealth: Neurophysiological and Motivational Mechanisms Contributing to Racial Discrimination in Economic Decision Making

Academic year 2021-2022 was rich in honors, achievements and projects for SCANlab RAs Devon Terry, Mikayla Rodgers, Makayla Pollock, Kristina Essig and Liz Conley!

The lab is excited to unveil the new website: www.scanlab.page

Dr. Cofresi shared with The New Yorker Magazine his insights about neurobiology of conditioned behaviors like alcohol and drug abuse. Click here for the full The New Yorker article

Paul (PJ) Brancaleone has joined the SCANlab! He is a 1st-year graduate student in the social/personality area of the psychology PhD program at Mizzou.

Kristin Black wrote a piece about SCANlab Postdoctoral Fellow, Roberto Cofresí for the Missouri Center for Addiction Research and Engagement (MO-CARE).

In July 2020, Hannah successfully defended her dissertation titled Racial discrimination and mental health : temporal dynamics and neurocognitive moderators. Dr. Volpert-Esmond is now Assistant Professor in Psychology at The University of Texas at El Paso. Congratulations, Dr. Volpert-Esmond!

Jorge successfully defended his dissertation and has accepted a position at Yale as a Postdoctoral Associate. in Congratulations, Dr. Martins!

You can read Bruce’s President’s Letter on the SPR website:

sprweb.org/page/2020Pres_Letter

Casey completed his bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his master’s degree in Psychology from San Diego State University. He is broadly interested in using event-related potentials (ERPs) to understand how neurocogntive processes contribute to the etiology, maintenance, and abatement of substance use disorders.

We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Roberto Cofresí to the lab. Dr. Cofresí received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018. His research interests include the neurobiology of incentive sensitization in alcohol use disorder, and translation of preclinical (animal) models to humans.

Hannah Volpert-Esmond’s F31 grant, also known as a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship, is being funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

Bartholow and Piasecki are both PIs on a new R01 grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). THe NIH grant is to study the association between alcohol sensitivity, reactivity to alcohol-related cues in the lab, and drinking and related behaviors in the natural environment.

Every two years the Chancellor’s Awards Committee selects one mid-career faculty member in the Behavioral and Social sciences who has “made outstanding contributions in research and/or creative activity and has great promise for achieving wider recognition.” Dr. Bartholow was honored as the 2016 awardee.

Dr. Bartholow was named an APS fellow in recognition of “sustained and outstanding distinguished contributions to psychological science.” He is very grateful to his colleague and friend, Dr. Kenneth Sher, for nominating him for this honor.

Hannah Volpert will receive funds to defray the cost of her attendance at the SPR annual meeting in Seattle, WA in September. She will present the findings of an experiment showing that early visual attention, indicated by the P2 component of the event-related potential, is enhanced when people encounter others’ negative, unexpected behavior.

We are very pleased that Dr. Liana Hone, whose research focuses on the evolutionary bases of risk-taking behaviors, has joined the SCANlab.

Curt Von Gunten and Meredith Johnson were both awarded 2015 summer grant writing fellowships from the Department of Psychological Sciences.

We were joined in September of 2014 by Ozlem Korucuoglu, a researcher specializing in adolescent alcohol use and other risky behaviors.

We’re pleased to welcome our first international graduate student, Jorge Martins, to the SCAN lab.

Kimmy Fleming recently was notified that she is one of six winners of the annual Memorial Award, given each year by the Research Society on Alcoholism “to honor RSA members who have recently passed away.”

Hannah Volpert has been a Project Manager in the SCANlab for nearly two years, and has done a simply outstanding job.

Since starting in the SCN lab as a graduate student 3 years ago, Kimmy Fleming has been investigating the neural and behavioral correlates of low sensitivity to the acute effects of alcohol, a known risk factor for the development of problem drinking.

At the business meeting and luncheon of its annual meeting in Florence, Italy, the Society for Psychophysiological Research announced that Bruce Bartholow is the incoming Secretary-Elect for the Society.

Kim Fleming presented findings from her master’s thesis research at the 30th Annual Research and Creative Activities Forum sponsored by the University of Missouri Graduate School and Graduate Professional Council, and won first place in the Behavioral Sciences Category. Her thesis research also represents preliminary findings for a predoctoral fellowship grant application with NIH (F31), which recently received an outstanding priority score by the grant review panel.

On September 4, 2012, the International Social Cognition Network (ISCON) announced that former SCN post-doctoral trainee Chris Loersch (now Research Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder) and one of his former mentors, B. Keith Payne of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (and a dear friend of the SCN lab), are the winners of the 2011 Best Paper Award.

We are very pleased that Dr. Kira Bailey has joined the lab this year. Dr. Bailey received her graduate training under the supervision of Dr. Robert West at Iowa State University, focusing primarily on using event-related brain potentials to understand cognitive control processes.

A one-day symposium focusing on the latest research into implicit racial bias will take place on the MU campus on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, hosted by Dr. Bruce Bartholow.

Grace Allen, currently a senior Psychology major and honors student at MU, was honored at the annual Psychology Day on April 29, 2011, with the presentation of the Max F. Meyer Award for her poster presentation, which displayed the findings of her research on heavy drinking and cognitive abilities among young adults. Grace plans to attend graduate school in the fall to seek a Master’s of Social Work degree. Good work, Grace!

Chris Loersch is the resident expert in attitudes and social cognition in the SCN Lab, and soon will be able to add “ERP expert” to his list of skills. Dr. Loersch was notified in April that his application to attend the two-week intensive ERP training course, known informally as “ERP Bootcamp,” hosted by Dr. Steven Luck each summer at the University of California-Davis Center for Mind and Brain, was approved. Although other SCN Lab members have applied in the past, Chris is the first SCN Lab affiliate to be accepted for this opportunity. Good luck, Chris!

As part of ongoing efforts to understand effects of alcohol on social behaviors, and related efforts aimed at understanding processes that influence expression of implicit racial bias, SCN lab members Chris Loersch and Bruce Bartholow have teamed up with Dr. Jeffrey Sherman (UC-Davis), an expert in social cognition, to conduct experiments investigating these issues. The work is being funded in part by a grant awarded to Dr. Sherman from the National Science Foundation.

At the business meeting and luncheon of its annual meeting in Portland, OR, the Society for Psychophysiological Research announced that Bruce Bartholow was one of two individuals elected to serve a 3-year term on the Board of Directors for the Society. The Board meets each year to discuss scientific, educational and fiscal matters pertinent to the society and its goals.

Each year at its annual conference, SPR recognizes a small number of graduate students for outstanding research presentations with a student poster award. This year, around 250 posters were first-authored by students, but only 16 were selected for this honor, which includes a $300 award. Good job Chris and Sarah!

We are very pleased to have Dr. Elena Stepanova join the lab this year. Elena is a social psychologist whose research examines conceptualization of social categories. Elena is interested in understanding the ways in which alcohol might influence processing of visual cues associated with social categories such as race. Elena will also be working on one of our ongoing alcohol administration projects, which is designed to specify effects of alcohol on sub-components of executive cognitive functioning. Welcome, Elena!

Alissa Rasmussen was 1 of only 26 winners (out of 420 submissions) of the Psi Chi Research Award for her abstract submitted to the 2010 Midwestern Psychological Association meeting in Chicago, IL. Alissa’s project investigated the effects of acute violent video game exposure on aspects of executive cognitive functioning, including behavioral inhibition and interference control.

Thanks to 3 new research grants (all started in 2009), a number of exciting new projects recently have begun in the SCN lab:

Erika Henry’s dissertation research, which investigates the extent to which individual differences in emotion regulation interact with acute effects of alcohol to influence performance monitoring and adjustment processes, is being funded by a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) from the NIAAA. This is Erika’s first research grant. (Mentors include Bruce D. Bartholow and Kenneth J. Sher.)

We are very fortunate to have Dr. Chris Loersch join the lab this year as a post-doctoral trainee (supported by grant 2T32 AA013526-06 from the NIAAA). Chris is a social psychologist specializing in social cognition (especially priming effects). Chris is particularly interested in applying his “Situated Inference” model of priming to understanding predictors of alcohol use and effects of alcohol on generation of novel behaviors.

Doctoral candidate Erika Henry received a 2008 travel award to attend the annual meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research (SPR) in Austin, TX.

Geoff Kerr was 1 of only 21 honorees (out of 320 submissions) to receive a Psi Chi Research Award for his abstract submitted to the 2008 Midwestern Psychological Association meeting in Chicago, IL. Geoff’s project investigated the effects of acute and chronic violent video game exposure on brain activity and aggressive behavior.

Each year the Society for Psychophysiological Research recognizes the achievements of an early career scientist (or scientists). Dr. Bartholow is the 2007 awardee for work investigating the neural mechanisms of social cognition. Dr. Bartholow will receive the award in October at the annual meeting of the Society, which will take place in Savannah, GA.

2 new post-doctoral scholars join the SCN Lab in summer 2007, Drs Eunsam Shin and Eduardo Vasquez! Welcome!

Master’s candidate Sarah Lust received a 2006 SPR travel award to attend the annual meeting of the Society in Vancouver, BC. Her poster, entitled “Sex, Booze, and ERPs: Preliminary Distinctions Between Implicit and Explicit Condom Attitudes,” attracted a great deal of attention at the meeting.