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Chelan Weaver
Graduate Student, Memory and Executive Processes Group
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Contact details
| E-mail address: | chelan.weaver@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk |
| Telephone: | +44 (0)1223 355294 |
| Fax: | +44 (0)1223 359062 |
| Address: | MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge, CB2 7EF |
Research areas
I study cognitive control under the supervision of Michael Anderson and James Rowe.
Cognitive control is a cluster of complex mental processes that enable flexible responding to dynamic environments, goals, and situations. Individual performance on cognitive control tasks varies tremendously, and individual differences have been associated with differences in real-world outcomes such as psychopathology, academic achievement, and health. My work has focused on gaining a better understanding of one aspect of cognitive control: response inhibition. Response inhibition refers to the ability to stop unwanted thoughts and actions. In the brain, the prefrontal cortex is known to be particularly important for successful response inhibition, but the specificity of functions (and their localizations) remains controversial. Moreover, an understanding of how the prefrontal cortex interacts with other brain regions to forestall responses is still emerging.
While pursuing my Ph.D., I have developed a novel behavioral measure to assess whether motor control utilizes the same cognitive processes as are involved in mnemonic control. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, I have been investigating to what extent different types of stopping rely on common brain regions. I am also exploring whether individual differences in ability to prevent unwanted actions is related to differing brain structure or connectivity.