My lab studies the core ingredients of one of the most defining and uniquely human experiences: thought. What makes us think certain thoughts at certain times? Can we regulate or control our thoughts? What do our thoughts reveal about our conceptual representations? What happens when thinking itself becomes pathological?

The Thought Dynamics lab focuses on the basic mechanisms that help us maintain a coherent train of thought, and regulate thoughts and their expression in accordance with personal and interpersonal goals. We believe that understanding these mechanisms can help elucidate a variety of mental health problems (e.g., psychosis, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder), and indeed, a considerable part of our research focuses on trying to understand the mechanisms underlying abnormal thought dynamics.

We study these questions by integrating introspective, behavioral, computational, and neural measures of how people think and control their thoughts in solitary moments and during social interactions. In particular, we develop and use computational models to explain how conceptual representations evolve and guide thinking, and how thoughts dynamically unfold. We also use a dual EEG system to study the neural substrates of thought dynamics and conceptual representation during communication.