Amber Howell

Post-graduate Researcher

I am a Junior Specialist in the TCAN lab, working under Dr. Lesh. I graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Computer Science. My goal is to earn a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience. My interests include multimodal neuroimaging, real-time fMRI, and, more generally, cognitive control impairments such as abnormal neural synchrony and its role in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Our research focuses on abnormal cognitive control mechanisms and inflammation in the brain in early onset psychotic illnesses. I independently conduct fMRI scans with patients and control subjects, using 3T Siemens Tim Trio and 1.5T GE Signa scanners. In addition to data acquisition, I analyze both imaging and behavioral data and administer behavioral and cognitive tasks. For processing and analyzing data, I use both neuroimaging packages, such as SPM, FSL, FreeSurfer, AFNI, and CONN, as well as custom code written in bash, Python, and Matlab.