Section on Cognitive Neuropsychology Staff

Alex Martin, Ph.D. | NIH Senior Investigator and Chief

Dr. Martin received his Ph.D. from the City University of New York.  He is Chief of the Cognitive Neuropsychology Section, focused on understanding the neural organization of human memory and social processing systems and how they breakdown in neuropsychiatric disorders. Dr. Martin is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Psychological Association.

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Sam Audrain, Ph.D. | Post-doctoral Fellow

Sam received her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Toronto, and joined the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition in 2021. Her research focuses on understanding the neural substrates of long-term memory formation, consolidation, and retrieval in typical adults and in populations with memory dysfunction. She primarily uses fMRI and behavioral approaches to answer her research questions.

Jason Avery, Ph.D. | Research Fellow

Dr. Avery received his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from The University of Tulsa in 2013. He joined the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition in 2017 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His current research focuses on the neurobiology of taste perception and food-related cognition, and incorporates a combination of machine-learning methods, behavioral modeling, and high-field functional MRI.

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Jude Baffoe-Bonnie | Post-baccalaureate Fellow

Jude received his BS in Neuroscience from Temple University. His research involves examining hippocampal representations of coarse and detailed memory, as well as investigating the cortical layers that store long-term memories after consolidation.

Caroline Candy | Post-baccalaureate Fellow

Caroline graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in biopsychology, cognition, and neuroscience and a minor in business administration. She currently studies taste perception using fMRI. She is interested in studying the neural mechanisms underlying perception and memory in individuals with ASD and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

Leonardo Claudino, Ph.D. | Staff Scientist

Leo holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland College Park (2016). Prior to joining the Section on Cognitive Neuropsychology as a Staff Scientist, Leo was a Postdoc at the Human Cortical Physiology and Neurorehabilitation Section (HCPS-NINDS) and a Staff Scientist at the Section of Neurobiology of Fear and Anxiety (SNFA-NIMH). He is interested in the neural and behavioral bases of perception, action, consolidation, motivation, and decision-making. Leo’s tools include, but are not limited to: MEG, tACS, crowdsourcing, computational modeling, signal processing and numerical optimization.

Adrian Gilmore, Ph.D. | Research Fellow

Adrian received his PhD in Psychological and Brain Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on retrieval processes in human memory, with a particular emphasis on how we remember specific events or episodes from our past. Adrian employs a combination of behavioral and neuroimaging methods in his work.

Stephen J. Gotts, Ph.D. | Senior Associate Scientist

Dr. Gotts received his B.A. from Trinity University (TX) in 1994 and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003 in Cognitive Neuroscience (Psychology). Following postdoctoral fellowships at CMU (Dr. David Plaut) and NIMH (Dr. Robert Desimone and Dr. Alex Martin), he joined the Section on Cognitive Neuropsychology as a Staff Scientist in 2010.  Dr. Gotts’s research is aimed at understanding the neural mechanisms that underlie the processing and representation of long-term perceptual and conceptual knowledge in the brain, with a particular focus on mechanisms of inter-regional physiological interaction (functional connectivity) and neural oscillations. He uses behavioral, fMRI, and electrophysiological (ECoG,EEG,MEG) experiments and neural network modeling in order to formulate explicit theories about the relationship between brain and behavior.

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Cassie Levesque | Post-baccalaureate Fellow

Cassie graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Madison with a B.S. in Neurobiology. She currently works on a simultaneous fMRI and EEG project investigating the neural processing of repetition suppression and repetition priming. She is interested in studying consciousness, dreaming, and the use of psychedelics in psychotherapy.

Taylor Li | Post-baccalaureate Fellow

Taylor graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) with a BS in Biopsychology and a BA in Statistics & Data Science. Her research currently employs task-based high-field laminar fMRI to explore neural cognition.

Shawn Milleville | Psychologist and Lab Manager

Shawn received his BA in Psychology and Computer Science from St. Mary's College of Maryland. He collects and analyzes data from a variety of task-based and resting state fMRI and behavioral experiments on both normal and clinical populations. Shawn serves as the liaison on study collaborations with other labs at the NIH. He also performs administrative and purchase requests for the lab.

Andrew Persichetti, Ph.D. | Research Fellow

Dr. Persichetti received his BA in Philosophy and Psychology from Portland State University and his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from Emory University. He joined the Lab of Brain and Cognition at NIMH in 2018. He primarily uses a combination of fMRI and behavioral measures in humans to study how perception, memory, and language systems contribute to the acquisition and representation of knowledge.

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Jiayu Shao | Post-baccalaureate Fellow

Jiayu graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a BS in Neuroscience. His research explores the neural connectivity patterns underlying autism spectrum disorder using fMRI, behavioral assessments, and various computational analyses.