Human brains contain specialized systems for numbers, objects, space, and other minds, but we don’t yet understand how these systems combine to produce complex thought (e.g., “Alice saw three keys and inferred which one must open the door”). My career vision is to understand how specialized cognitive systems interact to enable abstract reasoning. Over the next five years I will test the hypothesis that when we infer others’ mental states from their actions, neural systems specialized for social, physical, and spatial thinking directly reuse one another’s representations. I will use functional neuroimaging to show that regions supporting spatial and physical thought contain information used in psychological reasoning. Next I will measure interregional coupling to characterize how these systems cooperate, and use noninvasive brain stimulation to test causal effects. Converging evidence will reveal how specialized neural systems coordinate directly to build complex, everyday cognition.
Awards and Achievements
- Rising Star, Association for Psychological Science (APS) ( 2025)
- National Research Service Award, National Institutes of Health (NIH) ( 2023)
- Glushko Dissertation Prize, Cognitive Science Society ( 2021)
- George W. Goethals Teaching Prize, Harvard ( 2019)
- Graduate Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation (NSF) ( 2016)
- Phi Beta Kappa, Dartmouth College ( 2014)