| Start Date: | 2/27/2019 | Start Time: | 4:00 PM |
| End Date: | 2/27/2019 | End Time: | 5:30 PM |
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Event Description
BIOMED Seminar
Title:
Altering Cognitive and Affective Flexibility with Noninvasive Electric Brain Stimulation
Speaker:
Evangelia G. Chrysikou, PhD
Associate Professor
Applied Cognitive and Brain Sciences Program
Department of Psychology
Drexel University
Details:
Cognitive and affective flexibility refer to the ability to adapt cognitive or emotional responses to meet unexpected environmental changes or task demands. Both kinds of flexibility are components of most higher-order behavior and flexibility impairments are a hallmark of different forms of neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as stroke, depression, and traumatic brain injury. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a method of noninvasive brain stimulation involving the application of small electric currents (1-2mA) through electrodes positioned over the scalp.
In this talk, I will review recent research from our lab employing tDCS over prefrontal cortex and paired with behavioral and brain imaging measures to alter cognitive and affective flexibility in healthy individuals and patients with mood disorders. I will discuss the potential of tDCS as a method of cognitive enhancement and rehabilitation, as well as the importance of noninvasive brain stimulation research toward understanding the neural bases of cognitive and affective flexibility.
Biosketch:
Evangelia G. Chrysikou, PhD, joined Drexel in 2018 as an Associate Professor in Applied Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the Department of Psychology. She received her Ph. D. from the Brain and Cognitive Sciences program at Temple University and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Chrysikou uses cognitive neuroscience methods (like fMRI and tDCS) to study how people learn and remember information about everyday objects. She is particularly interested in the flexibility with which the human mind allows for the generation of novel or unusual uses for objects when the situation imposes such demands (e.g., using a baseball bat as a rolling pin, instead of for playing baseball), as well as the implications of such flexibility for theories of semantic knowledge organization and cognitive control.
Dr. Chrysikou's current research includes exploring the educational applications of cognitive training paradigms for the development of higher-order thinking in young adults, as well as the translational implications of cognitive flexibility for the characterization of deficient cognitive/executive profiles in depression and other psychiatric disorders marked by prefrontal cortex hypofunction. |
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Location:
Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building (PISB), Room 120, located on the northeast corner of 33rd and Chestnut Streets. |
Audience:
Undergraduate StudentsGraduate StudentsFacultyStaff |
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