Director
Maital Neta
E-mail: maitalneta@unl.edu
Phone: (402) 472-3646
Dr. Neta is the Director of the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab. She received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Dartmouth College in 2010, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Neurology at Washington University.
Dr. Neta is now the Happold Associate Professor of Psychology and Associate Director of the Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior (CB3). Her research capitalizes on a number of methods from psychology and neuroscience to examine ambiguity resolution in the domain of emotional facial expressions. Specifically, although some expressions provide clear predictive information that something good (e.g., happy) or bad (e.g., angry) will happen, other expressions, like surprise, have predicted both positive (e.g., birthday party) and negative (e.g., car accident) events for us in the past. When presented in the absence of contextual information, these ambiguously valenced expressions can be used to delineate a valence bias: ambiguous stimuli are stably interpreted negatively by some people and positively by others. The working hypothesis in the lab is that positivity requires regulation.
Her work is funded in part by an R01 from the National Institute of Mental Health and an NSF CAREER Award. She has received multiple academic achievement awards, including being selected as a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Outstanding Research and Creative Activities Award, and the Harold and Esther Edgerton Junior Faculty Award. She serves as President-Elect of the Society for Affective Science, is a standing member of the Human Complex Mental Functions NIH study section, and serves as Consulting Editor for Emotion, Affective Science, and Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience.
For more information, see http://psychology.unl.edu/maital-neta).
(CV)
Post-doctoral Researchers
Jordan E. Pierce
Email: jpierce14@unl.edu
Jordan joined the lab in November 2020. She received her PhD from the University of Georgia in 2016 and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Geneva, Switzerland from 2016-2020. Her research has utilized eye tracking and neuroimaging to study visual attention and emotion in clinical and healthy populations and to investigate mechanisms of neurocognitive plasticity. Her current work in the lab focuses on emotion valence bias in face processing and regulating emotional responses in healthy individuals across the lifespan using fMRI. (CV)
Graduate Students
This could be you! Dr. Neta is accepting graduate students for this upcoming cycle (Fall 2024). Please apply to the Department of Psychology by the listed deadline. If you are interested in applying to work with her as a graduate student, please contact her and tell her about your background and research interests.
Lab Managers
Ashley Humphries
Email: ahumphries2@unl.edu
Ashley joined the lab in July of 2023. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a B.S.A in Neuroscience and an Evidence and Inquiry certificate. As an undergraduate, she worked in Dr. Alison Preston’s Cognitive Neuroscience lab and investigated how social rejection can affect memory processes. Ashley is broadly interested in social connection, neural bases of emotion, and multivariate analyses for neuroimaging (fMRI). Her CV is available upon request.
Bella Peckinpaugh
Email: ipeckinpaugh2@unl.edu
Bella joined the lab in June of 2024. She graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. in Psychology and minors in Statistics and Spanish. As an undergraduate, she worked as a research assistant in Dr. Dan Foti’s PACER Lab and Dr. Sean Lane’s REACT Lab. Bella is broadly interested in how negative cognition and emotion regulation impact depression symptomology over time. Her CV is available upon request.
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Amelia Burba |
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Nate Matulka |
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Madison Livingston |
Lab Alumni
Grace Kupka - Former lab manager
Macey Grisso - Former lab manager, currently a lab manager at University of California, Riverside
Johannah Bashford-Largo - Former graduate student, currently a Research Scientist at Boys Town National Research Hospital
Kaylee Donner - Former research assistant
Jaylen Starks - Former research assistant, currently a Masters student at the University of Wisconson - La Crosse
Jenny Nguyen - Former research assistant
Emily Hearn - Former research assistant
Isabel Sigmon - Former research assistant
Carlie Cahoy - Former research assistant, currently a Masters student at the University of Nebraska - Omaha
Eisha Haque - Former lab manager, currently a Ph.D. student at Columbia University
Becca Walker - Former research assistant
Tabitha Ristvedt - Former research assistant, currently a Ph.D. student student at the University of Texas - Dallas
Jenna Kramer - Former research assistant
Jake Vogel - Former research assistant
Lauren Anderson - Former research assistant
Liv O'Clair - Former research assistant
Nicholas Harp - Former graduate student, currently a postdoc at UC Berkeley.
Lauren Chan - Former lab manager
Nathan Petro - Former postdoctoral fellow, currently a postdoc at Boys Town National Research Hospital.
Kayla Clark - Former lab manager, currently a Ph.D. student at Rice University.
Jada Loro - Former research assistant, currently a M.P.H. student at Washington University.
Ava Landis - Former research assistant
Lauren Unruh - Former research assistant, currently working full-time as a behavioral health technician.
Catie Brown - Former graduate student, currently a UX Researcher at Buildertrend in Omaha.
Daniel Henley - Former lab manager, currently a Ph.D. student at Michigan State University.
Tien Tong - Former lab manager, currently a postdoc at Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai.
Ruby Basyouni - Former lab manager, currently a Ph.D. student at University of California, Los Angeles.
Maggie Rempe - Former research assistant, currently a MD-Ph.D. Scholar in the College of Medicine at the University of Nebraska Medicine.
Nathan Pettid - Former research assistant, currently a Ph.D. student at Colorado State University.
In loving memory of former mentor, Dave Bucci (1968-2019)
Lab Photos!
June 2024
Saying goodbye to lab managers Grace and Macey during a cookout at Maital's place! We will miss you! Also the debut of our lab shirts!
Fall 2023
The lab celebrates Halloween!
Left to right: Macey Grisso, Doug Schultz, Jordan Pierce, Isabel Sigmon, Ashley Humphries, Grace Kupka, Maital Neta
Summer 2023
The lab gets together for ice cream!
Starting from the back (left to right): Jordan Pierce, Isabel Sigmon, Grace Kupka, Tabitha Ristvedt, Jay Schalk, Eisha Haque, Macey Grisso, Maital Neta
Summer 2022
Winter 2021
Spring 2021
Fall 2020
Spring 2019
The lab celebrates Maital's tenure!
Fall 2018
Back row from left: Nathan Petro, Joshua Jolton, Nick Harp
Middle row from left: Catie Brown, Ruby Basyouni, Claudia Clinchard, Nathan Pettid
Front row from left: Maital Neta, Bethany Mahan
Summer 2018
Lab members, friends, and family welcome lab manager Ruby Basyouni (3rd from left) and bid farewell to fomer lab manager Dan Henley (far right).
Fall 2017 semester
Back row from left: Nathan Pettid (undergraduate), Autumn Dern (undergraduate), Dan Henley (Lab Manager: CAN Lab), Jake Derby (undergraduate)
Middle row from left: Maggie Rempe (undergraduate), Tina Javidi (undergraduate), Kaitlyn Winter (undergraduate), Nick Harp (graduate student), KayLee Flower (undergraduate)
Front row from left: Krupa Patel (undergraduate), Maital Neta (PI: Director of CAN Lab), Sara Cipolla (undergraduate), Catie Brown (graduate student), Saisha Adhikari (undergraduate)
Our kick-off party at Maital's house (Fall 2017)
Our end-of-the-year lab meeting (Spring 2015)
Back row from left: Alex Enersen (undergraduate), Ryan Kirkpatrick (undergraduate), Alex Wasserman (graduate student in Adolescent Development Lab), Elaina Montague (graduate student in Serious Mental Illness Research Group), Maital Neta (PI: Director of CAN Lab)
Front row from left: Michaela Frenzel (undergraduate), Aaron Hoagland (undergraduate), Tien Tong (Lab Manager: CAN Lab), Carley Beinlich (undergraduate)