Lab Members

Director

Maital Neta

E-mail: maitalneta@unl.edu
Phone: (402) 472-3646

Dr. Neta is the Director of the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab. She received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Dartmouth College in 2010, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Neurology at Washington University.

Dr. Neta is now the Happold Associate Professor of Psychology and Associate Director of the Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior (CB3). Her research capitalizes on a number of methods from psychology and neuroscience to examine ambiguity resolution in the domain of emotional facial expressions. Specifically, although some expressions provide clear predictive information that something good (e.g., happy) or bad (e.g., angry) will happen, other expressions, like surprise, have predicted both positive (e.g., birthday party) and negative (e.g., car accident) events for us in the past. When presented in the absence of contextual information, these ambiguously valenced expressions can be used to delineate a valence bias: ambiguous stimuli are stably interpreted negatively by some people and positively by others. The working hypothesis in the lab is that positivity requires regulation.

Her work is funded in part by an R01 from the National Institute of Mental Health and an NSF CAREER Award. She has received multiple academic achievement awards, including being selected as a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Outstanding Research and Creative Activities Award, and the Harold and Esther Edgerton Junior Faculty Award. She serves as President-Elect of the Society for Affective Science, is a standing member of the Human Complex Mental Functions NIH study section, and serves as Consulting Editor for Emotion, Affective Science, and Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience.

For more information, see http://psychology.unl.edu/maital-neta).
(CV)

Post-doctoral Researchers

Jordan E. Pierce

Email: jpierce14@unl.edu

Jordan joined the lab in November 2020. She received her PhD from the University of Georgia in 2016 and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Geneva, Switzerland from 2016-2020. Her research has utilized eye tracking and neuroimaging to study visual attention and emotion in clinical and healthy populations and to investigate mechanisms of neurocognitive plasticity. Her current work in the lab focuses on emotion valence bias in face processing and regulating emotional responses in healthy individuals across the lifespan using fMRI. (CV)

 

Graduate Students

Johannah Bashford-Largo

Email: jorae@huskers.unl.edu  

Johannah is a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology’s Neuroscience & Behavior program. She graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a BA in Psychology and a minor in music in 2013. She then earned her Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling in 2018 at Springfield College in Massachusetts. Upon returning to Nebraska, she worked under Dr. James Blair and Dr. Karina Blair at the Center for Neurobehavioral Research located at Boys Town National Research Hospital. Her research uses multimodal imaging methods to study disruptions in the brain and how they associate with various mental health disorders.
(CV)

 

Jayson Schalk

Email: jschalk3@huskers.unl.edu  

Jay is a first-year graduate student in the Psychology Department’s Neuroscience and Behavior program. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee with a B.S. in Psychology. As an undergraduate, Jay worked in Dr. Karyn Frick’s Neuroendocrinology of Memory Lab, where he investigated the effects of sex-steroid hormones on memory in a mouse model of menopause. Between his undergraduate and graduate programs, Jay worked as a lab manager in Dr. Frick’s lab where he piloted and performed behavioral tests for studying the effects of hormones on anxiety-like and depression-like behaviors in mice. Broadly, his research interests are centered around the relationship between emotion regulation and affective disorders. (CV)

 

 

Lab Managers

Eisha Haque

Email: ehaque2@unl.edu

Eisha joined the lab in July of 2021. She graduated from the University of Toronto in June of 2021 with a B.S. in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science. As an undergraduate, she worked in Dr. Wil Cunningham’s Social Cognitive Science lab and investigated how people perceive and make judgements about ambiguous facial expressions. Eisha is interested in the relationship between a person’s social networks and their valence bias. Her CV is available upon request.

Macey Grisso

Email: mgrisso2@unl.edu

Macey joined the lab in May of 2022. She graduated from Longwood University with a B.S. in Psychology. As an undergraduate, she worked on an independent study investigating the relationship between emotional granularity and children of divorce. She is interested in further exploring the concept of emotional granularity. Her CV is available upon request.

Grace Kupka

Email: gkupka2@unl.edu

Grace joined the lab in July of 2022. She graduated from Hamilton College with a B. A. in Psychology. As an undergraduate, she completed a self-directed thesis on the influence of sibling relationships on self-esteem and attachment security in adulthood. Grace is interested in how different environmental influences in childhood impact social-emotional development, including emotion regulation, and valence bias. Her CV is available upon request.

 

Undergraduate Research Assistants

	Lauren Anderson Lauren is a third year undergraduate student currently pursuing her B.S. in Biological Sciences and a minor in Psychology.  She is planning on becoming a physician’s assistant after finishing her bachelor’s degree.  She is interested in learning more about how specific emotions affect different processes in the brain.
	Carlie Cahoy Carlie is a second-year undergraduate student pursuing a B.A. in Psychology and a Minor in Child, Youth, and Family studies. After her Bachelor's program, she is planning to attend Graduate school to eventually work in the behavioral health field as a licensed mental health practitioner.
	Liv O'Clair
	Jake Vogel
	Tabitha Ristvedt Tabitha Ristvedt is a fifth-year undergraduate student pursuing a B.S. in Biology, B.A. in Psychology, and minors in chemistry and music at Concordia University, Nebraska. She plans to pursue a doctoral degree in Cognitive Neuroscience after completing her undergraduate education. From there, she hopes to study executive functioning of neurotypical individuals and clinical populations as well as the interplay between emotions and cognitive function
	Madina Abduvohitova
	Jenna Kramer
	Isabel Sigmon Isabel Sigmon is a third-year undergraduate getting her B.A. in psychology. She plans to pursue a doctoral degree in Neuropsychology after completing her undergraduate education. She hopes to become a professor and running studies on neural pathways in the bipolar brain and possible ways of assisting in strengthening superior pathways.
	Mai Pham
	Emily Hearn
	Savannah Hamm

 

 

Lab Alumni

Nicholas Harp - Former graduate student, currently a postdoc at Yale University.

Lauren Chan - Former lab manager

Nathan Petro - Former postdoctoral fellow, currently a postdoc at Boys Town National Research Hospital.

Kayla Clark - Former lab manager, currently a Ph.D. student at Rice University.

Jada Loro - Former research assistant, currently a M.P.H. student at Washington University.

Ava Landis - Former research assistant.

Lauren Unruh - Former research assistant, currently working full-time as a behavioral health technician.

Catie Brown - Former graduate student, currently a UX Researcher at Buildertrend in Omaha.

Daniel Henley - Former lab manager, currently a Ph.D. student at Michigan State University. 

Tien Tong - Former lab manager, currently a postdoc at Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. 

Ruby Basyouni - Former lab manager, currently a Ph.D. student at University of California, Los Angeles.

Maggie Rempe - Former research assistant, currently a MD-Ph.D. Scholar in the College of Medicine at the University of Nebraska Medicine.

Nathan Pettid - Former research assistant, currently a Ph.D. student at Colorado State University.

In loving memory of former mentor, Dave Bucci (1968-2019)

Lab Photos!

Summer 2022

Winter 2021

Spring 2021

Fall 2020

Spring 2019

The lab celebrates Maital's tenure!

Fall 2018

Back row from left: Nathan Petro, Joshua Jolton, Nick Harp
Middle row from left: Catie Brown, Ruby Basyouni, Claudia Clinchard, Nathan Pettid 
Front row from left: Maital Neta, Bethany Mahan

Summer 2018

Lab members, friends, and family welcome lab manager Ruby Basyouni (3rd from left) and bid farewell to fomer lab manager Dan Henley (far right).  

Fall 2017 semester

Back row from left: Nathan Pettid (undergraduate), Autumn Dern (undergraduate), Dan Henley (Lab Manager: CAN Lab), Jake Derby (undergraduate)
Middle row from left: Maggie Rempe (undergraduate), Tina Javidi (undergraduate), Kaitlyn Winter (undergraduate), Nick Harp (graduate student), KayLee Flower (undergraduate)
Front row from left: Krupa Patel (undergraduate), Maital Neta (PI: Director of CAN Lab), Sara Cipolla (undergraduate), Catie Brown (graduate student), Saisha Adhikari (undergraduate)

Our kick-off party at Maital's house (Fall 2017)

Our end-of-the-year lab meeting (Spring 2015)

Back row from left: Alex Enersen (undergraduate), Ryan Kirkpatrick (undergraduate), Alex Wasserman (graduate student in Adolescent Development Lab), Elaina Montague (graduate student in Serious Mental Illness Research Group), Maital Neta (PI: Director of CAN Lab)
Front row from left: Michaela Frenzel (undergraduate), Aaron Hoagland (undergraduate), Tien Tong (Lab Manager: CAN Lab), Carley Beinlich (undergraduate)