We are thrilled to celebrate the remarkable achievements of this year’s scholarship recipients in our lab! Ruien (Rain) Wang and Tavneen have each earned an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), and Sarah Saju has been awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship in Science and Technology (QEII-GSST). These prestigious, merit-based awards recognize exceptional academic excellence and … More Celebrating Our Lab’s Outstanding Graduate Scholars

Ruien (Rain) Wang has successfully completed his comprehensive exam and is now officially a PhD candidate! This is a huge milestone in his doctoral journey, and it’s incredibly exciting to see all the amazing research and contributions he will continue to make in the lab.

Thanks to all the amazing volunteers from the lab who served as judges at this year’s Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Science Fair for STEM students in grades 5 to 12. Your generosity and time support the next generation of creative minds and potential new researchers. Thank you!

Over 18% of adults globally are expected to be obese by 2025, indicating widespread challenges in adopting healthy diets. Using a gradient approach, we studied how brain states change when making natural and regulated dietary choices. We found that individuals with lower weight status could modify their eating behaviors while maintaining similar large-scale brain activity. … More New PNAS paper on why some people (don’t) struggle with dietary self-control

The lab has successfully competed for competitive funding from the Bruce Mitchell Research Program. The funds will support the doctoral trainees in the laboratory.

Congrats to Lisa Bas and Ian Roberts on their exciting new paper published in eLife. The article sheds light on the question of what distinguishes biological agents who are willing to help others – even at significant costs to themselves – from those who seem to care mostly about their own welfare. How do social … More New paper explaining how social perceptions of others merit and need translate into social action.

Congrats to our newly minted Dr. Lisa Bas, who successfully completed her Ph.D. Her research explores the “malleability of social preferences: How, when, and why people make altruistic decisions.” Lisa defeated the odds and completed her thesis on time despite Ontario having some of the longest COVID-related lock-downs in the world (rendering fMRI research impossible), … More Congrats to our Dr. Lisa Bas, who successfully completed her Ph.D.!!

Congrats to two successful presenters at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroeconomics in Vancouver, Canada! Remi Janet presented a poster on his beautiful work of how large-scale cortical organization explains why some people have an easier time following healthy diets. Lisa Bas presented some of her exciting PhD work on how our thoughts … More Congrats to two successful presenters at the Society for Neuroeconomics annual meeting in Vancouver, Canada!

We want to welcome two new graduate students (Tavneen Sandhu and Sarah Saju), two new honours thesis students (Kiera Kenig and Andy Stokes-Noonan) together with several talented new undergraduate volunteers and directed lab students (Naomie Chen, Erin Lockett, and Georgia Brunicke). We are very excited to have you join the team. The lab is growing!

Rola Yaman competed successfully for an Ontario Graduate Scholarship! We are all very proud of you and look forward to hearing about all the fantastic things you will do as a graduate student!