Principal Investigator
Evangelia G. Chrysikou, Ph.D.
Email: lilachrysikou@drexel.edu
I am an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at Drexel University and the Director of the Applied Cognitive and Brain Sciences program. I also currently serve as interim Associate Dean of Research for the College of Arts and Sciences. I received my Ph.D. from the Brain and Cognitive Sciences program at Temple University and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. I use cognitive neuroscience methods (like fMRI and tDCS) to study how people learn and remember information about everyday objects. I am particularly fascinated by the astonishing flexibility with which the human mind allows for the generation of novel or unusual uses for objects when the situation imposes such demands (e.g., using a baseball bat as a rolling pin, instead of for playing baseball), as well as the implications of such flexibility for theories of semantic knowledge organization and cognitive control. I am further exploring the educational applications of cognitive training paradigms for the development of higher-order thinking in young adults, as well as the translational implications of cognitive flexibility for the characterization of deficient cognitive/executive profiles in depression and other psychiatric disorders marked by prefrontal cortex hypofunction. When I'm not in the lab, I love spending time with my family and I enjoy cooking, reading, traveling (particularly to the Greek islands), Asian food, running, kick-boxing, Basset Hounds and dogs in general, the music of Jack White, independent movies, and baseball.