Maya Rosen, a postdoc in the Stress and Development Lab, has received the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Annual Meeting Postdoctoral Fellow Award for her work on neural mechanisms underlying the income-achievement gap. This work used functional MRI to investigate the neural networks that support memory-guided and cued attention in in school-aged children. Results revealed that recruitment of visual processing regions in the ventral temporal cortex during both cued and memory-guided attention was associated with academic achievement. Moreover, activation in this region explained SES-related differences in academic achievement. These findings extend previous work by highlighting the role of visual processing regions in complex cognitive functions to support children as they make the transition to school. This is a tremendous accomplishment as very few researchers earn this distinction. We are all so proud of her!
Maya will be presenting this work at the upcoming CNS meeting, which will take place March 14-17th in Boston. Maya’s presentation will take place on Monday, March 16th from 2:30-4:30 pm. Feel free to come by and extend your support!