Social Cognitive and Addiction Neuroscience Lab (SCANlab)

December 2009

Several new grants awarded to SCN Lab Director Bruce Bartholow and colleagues

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

(1) “Collaborative Research: Individual Differences in Executive Functions and Expressions of Racial Biases: Behavioral and ERP Investigations,” funded by the National Science Foundation (BCS 0847872; Co-PI: Bartholow), investigates the role of cognitive control processes in performance on laboratory tasks of race bias;

(2) “Alcohol Effects on Executive Cognitive Function: Specifying Component Processes,” funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism/NIAAA (as part of the Multidisciplinary Alcoholism Research Center [2P60 AA011998-11]; PI: Andrew Heath), investigates acute effects of alcohol on specific sub-components of executive functioning; and

(3) “Behavioral and Neurophysiological Effects of Co-Use of Alcohol and Caffeine,” funded by the NIAAA (Co-investigators: Bartholow and Denis McCarthy), investigates the extent to which combining alcohol and caffeine influences neurocognitive (ERP) and behavioral responses during performance of cognitive control tasks assessing skills relevant for driving.

These grants are in addition to an ongoing project, “Alcohol Effects on Performance Monitoring: Affective and Cognitive Components,” also funded by the NIAAA, which investigates the effects of alcohol on error processing using behavioral and ERP methods.