"Director" Nystrom with legendary director Werner Herzog at our MRI facility, 2021. (Pitching him my script for sure-fire hit sequel "Grizzly Man 2: Electric Grizzaloo"...)
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"Director" Nystrom with legendary director Werner Herzog at our MRI facility, 2021. (Pitching him my script for sure-fire hit sequel "Grizzly Man 2: Electric Grizzaloo"...)
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Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Facilities, Scully Center for the Neuroscience of Mind & Behavior, at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.
Co-Director of Jonathan Cohen’s Neuroscience of Cognitive Control Laboratory.
I've been very fortunate in my academic life: I started graduate school at CMU under Jay McClelland just one year after he (with Rumelhart, Hinton et al.) published the famous PDP volumes on neural network models that ultimately led to the Deep Learning AI revolution. And functional MRI neuroimaging was invented as I was finishing grad school, with Jonathan Cohen at CMU/UPitt conducting some of the earliest studies.
Since 1994 I have used fMRI to investigate the neurophysiological foundations of memory, attention, motivation and cognitive control, including exploring their interactions during economic, moral, and social decision making. Anatomically, I focused primarily on the functions of the prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate, and the midbrain/brainstem catecholaminergic nuclei.
Over the past decade my efforts have gradually shifted toward increasing management and educational roles. I currently direct the cognitive neuroscience facilities at Princeton, providing MRI, EEG, MEG and other technologies; I have also managed many multimillion-dollar research grants. From 2014 through 2022, I taught the human neuroscience methods course required of all Neuroscience graduate students at Princeton. (For complete details, you can download my CV below.)
- Ph.D. (Cognitive Psychology), Carnegie-Mellon University, 1994
- B.S. (with Honors; Psychology), University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1987
(For a complete list of journal articles, with links and abstracts, see Publications section.)
- Botvinick M, Nystrom L, Fissell K, Carter C, & Cohen JD. (1999). Conflict monitoring vs. selection-for- action in anterior cingulate cortex. Nature, 402, 179-181.
- Cohen JD, Perlstein WM, Braver TS, Nystrom LE, Noll DC, Jonides J, & Smith EE. (1997). Temporal dynamics of brain activation during a working memory task. Nature, 386, 604-608.
- D'Ardenne K, McClure SM, Nystrom LE, & Cohen JD. (2008). BOLD responses reflecting dopaminergic signals in the human ventral tegmental area. Science, 319, 1264-1267.
- Delgado MR, Nystrom LE, Fissell C, Noll DC, & Fiez JA. (2000). Tracking the hemodynamic responses to reward and punishment in the striatum. Journal of Neurophysiology, 84, 3072-3077.
- Eppinger B, Schuck NW, Nystrom LE, & Cohen JD. (2013). Reduced striatal responses to reward prediction errors in older compared to younger adults. Journal of Neuroscience, 33, 9905-9912.
- Greene JD, Sommerville RB, Nystrom LE, Darley JM, & Cohen JD. (2001). An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science, 293, 2105-2108.
- Sanfey AG, Rilling JK, Aronson JA, Nystrom LE, & Cohen JD. (2003). The neural basis of economic decision-making in the ultimatum game. Science, 300, 1755-1758.
- Yeung N, Nystrom LE, Aronson JA, & Cohen JD. (2006). Between-task competition and cognitive control in task switching. Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 1429-1438.