Dr. Frick is part of team Milwaukee area professors working to prevent dementia in women:
Milwaukee-area professors closer to preventing dementia in women.
Dr. Stacey Nye interviewed by Lake Effect highlighting eating disorders.
Dr. Stacey Nye was interviewed by W51猎奇鈥檚 Lake Effect on February 27, 2019, in conjunction with National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (NEDAW). Dr. Nye, Director of 51猎奇鈥檚 Psychology Clinic and faculty supervisor for the Psychology Clinic鈥檚 Eating Disorder Clinic, highlighted important information about eating disorders and presented valuable treatment resources available through the 51猎奇 Psychology Clinic. The 51猎奇 Psychology Clinic also co-hosted an event on campus for NEDAW, a free screening of the documentary聽The Student Body, which included a Q&A with the star and filmmaker.
Listen to her interview:聽
Dr. Frick鈥檚 work toward cure for Alzheimer鈥檚 was featured on Channel 4!
Please see the link below for a very nice story on Dr. Frick鈥檚 lab on Channel 4!
Dr. Frick, her postdoctoral fellow (Dr. Koss), and her students in the lab have been featured in the story.
Milwaukee researchers work toward cure for Alzheimer’s
Dr. Helmstetter presented 鈥淗ow Does Memory Work鈥� at 51猎奇鈥檚 Short Talks Big Ideas
Our ability to learn and remember is central to our experience of the world and sense of who we are. 51猎奇 Distinguished Professor of Psychology Fred Helmstetter describes how we use molecules, cells and circuits in the brain to store and retrieve information. Dr. Helmstetter presented at 51猎奇’s inaugural “Short Talks, Big Ideas” event in February 2018. The event featured eight powerful lectures with the potential to reshape how we see and understand the world in 2018.
See his presentation at this link.
Lisa Taxier Wins 51猎奇’s First Three Minute (3MT) Thesis Competition
The Psychology department鈥檚 own Lisa Taxier, a 3rd-year neuroscience graduate student, won the university鈥檚 inaugural Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition!
This competition was sponsored by the Graduate School, Office of Research, and 51猎奇 Research Foundation, and originally developed by the University of Queensland to cultivate students鈥� academic, presentation, and research communication skills.聽Participation聽enriches聽the capacity of students聽to effectively explain their graduate聽research projects聽in three minutes, in a language appropriate to a non-specialist audience.聽51猎奇鈥檚 first competition drew nearly 100 contestants, who participated in qualifying rounds last month.
The top 14 finalists presented their 3MT talks April 4th in the Zelazo Center before an audience and panel of 4 judges. 聽Hanna Yousuf, also a Psychology department graduate student, was a finalist another and delivered an聽outstanding talk as well. As winner, Lisa was聽awarded聽a $1,500 prize. Their presentations may be viewed at: /graduateschool/3mt/.
Congratulations to Lisa and thanks to her and Hanna for representing the department so well!!
Dr. Lisdahl Participates In National Brain Development & Child Health Study
Dr. Lisdahl’s participation in was a recent feature on W51猎奇. Listen to the story at:
Stephan published a new study on computerized interpretation training for cognitive biases in OCD.
Stephan Siwiec and colleagues recently published an article in the Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders (JOCRD) that tested the feasibility of a brief computerized cognitive bias modification for interpretations (CBM-I) training as a potential intervention to reduce thought-action fusion (TAF). TAF leads individuals to interpret the presence of unwanted mental intrusions as morally equivalent to acting on them (e.g. thoughts of infidelity are as bad as the act), and/or increasing the likelihood of the feared consequence (e.g. car accidents, cancer). TAF is an important cognitive bias in various emotional disorders, especially, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).聽 CBM-I has been developed to challenge and replace disruptive interpretations with healthier ones, which in turn lessens the associated distress and grief.聽 CBM-I is well accepted by participants, and the use of computers enables it to be easily disseminated.聽 The study found that even a single session of computerized TAF-focused CBM-I training can meaningfully reduce TAF belief and decrease the related emotional distress experienced.
Stephan is building on these findings with his new dissertation study, which aims to determine if TAF-focused CBM-I can outperform a credible psychological comparison condition, stress management psychoeducation (SMP).聽 SMP is a standard part of many emotional disorder treatments, and has shown relation to reductions in obsession severity without directly targeting TAF.
This is an exciting line of research as CBM-I displays promise as a potential complementary training to current empirically supported interventions. Therefore, if findings in the dissertation study are promising, the next step would be to determine the trainings efficacy in a clinical OCD population. Moreover, developing CBM-I for TAF has the potential for adaption to mobile technology (smart phones and tablets), which can be done in the privacy of one鈥檚 home, with no current cost associated with the trainings.
Dr. Karyn Frick has received a 2017 51猎奇 Foundation Senior Faculty Research Award!
Dr. Karyn Frick has received a 2017 51猎奇 Foundation Senior Faculty Research Award!
The primary focus of her research is to understand how sex-steroid hormones, aging, and environmental factors affect hippocampal function and hippocampal-dependent memory.聽Please visit Dr. Frick’s website to learn about her wonderful research work.
Her faculty profile: /psychology/people/frick-karyn/
Dr. Frick鈥檚 laboratory:
Congratulations to Dr. Frick on this prestigious research award!
Ashleigh Harvey has received a 2017 Sigma Xi grant!
Ashleigh Harvey was recently awarded a grant-in-aid of research from Sigma Xi, a scientific research honor society.聽 The grant is entitled 鈥淎 Prospective Investigation of the Association between Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms and Response Inhibition Deficits鈥� and is a part of Ashleigh鈥檚 master鈥檚 thesis, which she is currently working on under the direction of her advisor, Dr. Hanjoo Lee.聽 Funds from the grant will be used to reimburse study participants, which are to be recruited nationwide through Amazon鈥檚 Mechanical Turk platform.
It has been suggested that response inhibition (the ability to inhibit a pre-potent response) deficits may play a role in the etiology and maintenance of obsessive-compulsive and related disorders (OCRDs), due to shared features of the disorders related to impulsivity.聽 Extant research examining the role of response inhibition deficits in these conditions has been correlational in nature.聽 Using computerized cognitive tasks, Ashleigh will examine response inhibition and OCRD symptoms across multiple time points to provide better insight into a direction of potential causality.
Cari Rosoff (Lee) has received 2017 APA Ethics Writing Prize!
Cari Rosoff received the 2017 American Psychological Association Ethics Committee Graduate Student Ethics Writing Prize at the APA Annual Convention in August 2017 for her paper entitled 鈥�Ethics in College Sexual Assault Research.鈥�
Concerns about the high rates of sexual assault on college campuses have led to a large increase in relevant research. Yet, the current literature is limited about the ethical implications of conducting research with college sexual assault victims. The paper addresses ethical dilemmas and provides recommendations for researchers study college sexual assault.
As the prize winner, Cari’s paper was presented at the APA Annual Convention and has been published in the journal Ethics and Behavior.