aaron wrightcognitive scientist, artist

about

To me, science is mentorship.

I've been privileged to work with and learn from several wonderful scholars, and my scientific lens is as much a product of their wisdom and prompting as it is formed around my own desire to mentor future scholars.

  • Most recently, I joined the Psychiatry, Embodiment and Computation (PEAC) Lab, within the Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences (CoPsy) and Carney Institute for Brain Science at Brown. I'm thrilled to be working with Frederike Petzschner and her team to study embodied intelligence –– how brain-body interactions shape learning, emotion, and psychiatric vulnerability –– using computational modeling, neuroimaging (EEG, fMRI), and behavioral methods.
    • I'm also excited to continue working with Oriel's group, and to extend our work to consider how individuals' affective experiences unfold over time.
  • Just beforehand, I spent time "discovering how minds and brains create language" as a post-baccalaureate research assistant in Evelina Fedorenko's language lab at MIT. Here I've worked with Agata Wolna, using fMRI and other techniques to explore the neural signatures of language processing, including the broader language network and how monolinguals and bilinguals differ in production and comprehension.
    • Simultaneously, I began collaborating with Yi Yang Teoh in Oriel FeldmanHall's lab at Brown, thinking about individual differences in emotion semantics and their implications for behavioral wellbeing and decision making.
  • Previously, I received my B.S. from Gordon College, where Dr. Susan Bobb transformed my distinct appreciations for linguistic structure and the human mind into a unified love of language in the bilingual brain. Dr. Peter Iltis also fostered these passions by taking me on as a research assistant working with real-time MRI and acoustic data from brass instrumentalists.