Contributions by role
Contributions by subject area
Zai-Fu Yao
Summary
In my lab, we apply multimodal neuroimaging (e.g. functional, structural, diffusion, resting-state, spectroscopy magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and electroencephalogram data) in humans to investigate brain functioning across the lifespan. We are interested in linking behavioral and neuroplastic changes in ways that allow us to test theoretically grounded hypotheses about cognitive development, particularly in representational processing and functional organization in the prefrontal cortex. Specifically, we focus on neural circuits that subserve how the different stages of human actions and movements shape goal-directed and stimuli-driven human performance. We aim to discover how actions are selected, planned, optimized, and executed. To achieve this, we employed psychophysics experiments, neuropsychological testing, and brain imaging tools to model how the brain's structural and functional network connectivities are modulated by volitional action.