Justin Robert Keene (PhD, 2014, Indiana University) is an Assistant Professor of Electronic Media and director of the Cognition & Emotion Lab in the College of Media & Communication at Texas Tech University. His research focuses on the cognitive processing of and emotional reactions to mediated messages from a dynamic, human-centered perspective.

Ben is an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University. His primary research interest lies in developing and applying various fMRI analysis methods, as well as exploring novel applications of fMRI as a research tool in new fields. As a Media Neuroscience Lab collaborator, Ben works on understanding the neural systems of counter arguing. Importantly, this work includes development of new statistical procedures for analyzing brain imaging datasets that are collected in multi-modal, low controlled experimental settings.

Klaus Mathiak is Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics at RWTH University in Aachen, Germany. As psychiatrist and cognitive neuroscientist he is interested in studying neural processes underlying complex social perception and behavior via state-of-the-art brain imaging technology (fMRI, MEG). Klaus and Rene pioneered the field of media neuroscience with their studies in the area of brain imaging of virtual violence. Klaus is an expert in developing brain imaging paradigms in multi-modal, low-controlled, and mediated environments.

Stacy L. Smith is the Founder of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the leading global think tank studying inequality in entertainment. Dr. Smith’s groundbreaking research examines inclusion (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, the LGBT community, people with disabilities, mental health) across film, TV and digital platforms, the music industry, and film criticism. She has authored over 100 articles, book chapters, and reports, and is covered regularly in popular press outlets. Dr. Smith crafts compelling and innovative solutions to inequality. In partnership with TIME’S UP, Tessa Thompson, and others, she launched the #4percentchallenge. She served on the Recording Academy Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion and is a Founding Board Member of She Is The Music. Dr. Smith has received numerous honors; LA Weekly named her the most influential person in Los Angeles (2015), she appeared on Billboard’s Women in Music List (2018), and was one of The Hollywood Reporter’s 50 Agents of Change (2019).

The UCSB Neuroscience Research Institute is a group of investigators whose collective goal is to create an intellectual atmosphere conducive to exploration at the frontiers of human knowledge where disciplinary boundaries disappear. Investigators in the NRI recognize that the interests of neuroscience extend broadly from repair and prevention of human disease to the principles that underlie the earliest nervous systems, from the human mind to the single molecular building blocks of the brain.

Gary Bente is a Professor in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University. He is currently Editor in Chief of the Journal of Media Psychology and Co-Editor of the German Textbook on Media Psychology. His research interests cover two areas: (1) interpersonal communication including face-to-face as well as mediated interactions, and (2) emotional effects of mass media with a special emphasis on objective process measures. His current work focuses on the production and perception of nonverbal behavior across cultures and its influence on impression formation and trust. Recent work also addresses the neural mechanisms underlying nonverbal communication and person perception. His work has been published in major communication as well as cognitive science and neuroscience journals and in four authored and edited books.

Dr. Allison Eden is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University. Her work focuses on understanding media enjoyment from a psychological perspective. She focuses on the role enjoyment plays in attention to and selection of media content, and more broadly the effects of entertainment on behavior and well-being. Dr. Eden’s research has been published in the Journal of Communication, Journal of Media Psychology, Media Psychology, and Mass Communication and Society, among others. She is an affiliated scholar of the Media Neuroscience Lab at UC Santa Barbara, and is a founding member of the Communication and Biology interest group at ICA.

Michael Gazzaniga is a Professor of Psychology and the Director of the SAGE Center for the Study of Mind at the University of California Santa Barbara. Michael’s work investigating how the brain enables the mind is both foundational and inspirational to the Media Neuroscience Lab. Over the course of several decades, a major focus of Michael’s research has been an extensive study of patients that have undergone split-brain surgery and revealed lateralization of functions across the cerebral hemispheres. In addition to his numerous positions and honors, Michael is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Michael serves as the Media Neuroscience Lab’s trusted advisor and thought leader.

Scott Grafton is a Professor of Psychology, Director of the Brain Imaging Center, and Co-Director of the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies at the University of California Santa Barbara. Broadly, Scott’s work focuses on how people organize movement into goal-oriented action. The emphasis is on elucidating the cognitive architecture that underlies action representation. This is developed with studies of sequence and skill acquisition, motor simulation, sensorimotor transformation, on-line control and action observation experiments. Scott lends his expertise in these areas to help understand the relationship between media, morality, and cognitive-behavioral outcomes.

Dan Linz is Professor in the Department of Communication at University of California Santa Barbara. His research involves empirically testing the social psychological assumptions made by the law and legal actors in the area of the First Amendment and freedom of speech, communication in the courtroom, and the application of scientific principles to legal decision making generally: an area he defines as “Forensic Communication.” Dan’s research spans the topics of media violence, pornography, other sex-oriented entertainment, pretrial publicity, news and race, censorship and on-line privacy. Consistent with the Lab’s mission, Dan’s research agenda seeks to empirically test evolutionary/biological explanations for phenomena at the intersection of law, media, and communication.

Chelsea is a former Media Neuroscience Lab Member. Her research interests include cognitive communication science and interactive media. Specifically, her research focuses on the relationship between cognitive sex differences, media usage, and media effects. She graduated and received her Ph.D. in 2020 with her dissertation entitled “Extending the Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars: Sex Differences in Evaluations of Moral Conflict in Narratives”.

Dana Mastro is Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California Santa Barbara. Her research investigates the media’s role in interracial/interethnic dynamics in society. Specifically, her work examines the influence of exposure to racial/ethnic representations in the media on perceptions of self and other as well as on intergroup relations. This program of research includes four primary areas of inquiry (read more). In testing these relationships, Dana’s research utilizes quantitative cognitive and biological measures (e.g., implicit association test, electrocardiography, skin conductance level) as well as experiments, content analyses, and surveys. Just as her work incorporates multiple methodologies, Dana’s research considers a broad range of social scientific literature (e.g., social identity, stereotyping and discrimination, media effects).

Scott Reid is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California Santa Barbara. In accord with the lab´s core theoretical foundation and mission, Scott´s research program investigates evolutionary explanations for human communicationand considers questions at the intersection of communication, social identity, and intergrouprelations. For example, Scott´s evolutionary work has provided evidence for the hypothesis that people track accents and religious groups to avoid novel pathogens. In other work, Scott has investigated proximal mechanisms involved in social judgments of media influence and judgments of the hostility contained in mediated messages.

John Sherry is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and the Cognitive Science Program at Michigan State University. He takes a cognitive science approach to questions of communication dynamics in two domains. First, he is interested in the use of media for education; in particular how to use flow to embed educational content. Additionally, he is researching the cognitive substrates of game engagement and learning; including, individual differences in cognitive skills, attentional mechanisms, and working memory capacity. Second, he has recently begun research on how to study interpersonal communication dynamically, as a system of interactions. As such, he is interested in investigating communication synchronization phenomena.

Ron Tamborini is Professor and Director of Doctoral Programs in the Department of Communciation at Michigan State University. His recent work explores the exposure to educational and entertaining content in traditional and new media. His entertainment research spans the psychology of comedy, suspenseful and violent drama, horror, tragedy, erotica, and sports. His new media research focuses on the experience of virtual and augmented reality. Ron’s work on narratives and morality is of particular relevance to the Media Neuroscience Lab. Using his model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME), Ron’s research program examines simple and complex processes thought to shape the reciprocal influences that connect media narratives and morality.

Peter Vorderer is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Mannheim. Previous affiliations include the University of Music, Theater and the Media in Hannover, the Annenberg School for Communication at USC and the Free University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on users’ interest in entertainment and in new media, as well as on consequences of using them. Currently, he is particularly interested in people’s habit to be (almost) permanently online and connected with others. His research has been published in major communication journals and in 11 authored and edited books. He is also President-elect select of the International Communication Association.