Aina Puce

ainapuce@indiana.edu
PY 353, Dept of Psychological & Brain Sciences, 1101 E 10th St, Bloomington IN 47405, USA.
(812) 856-0417

Home Website
Eleanor Cox Riggs Professor
Psychological and Brain Sciences
Organization for Human Brain Mapping
Chair-elect
NeuroImage
Senior Editor,
Perspectives for Psychological Science
Associate Editor

Field of study

social neuroscience; computational & cognitive neuroscience

Education

Post-doctoral Fellowship (Neurosurgery), Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA, 1993-1994
Ph.D. (Medicine), University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 1985-1990
Master of Applied Science (Physics) Swinburne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, 1982-1985
Bachelor of Applied Science (Biophysics/Instrumental Science), Swinburne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, 1978-1981
Higher School Certificate, The University High School, Melbourne, Australia, 1977

Research interests

My research program focuses on the neural basis of social cognition - the ability to interpret the actions, intentions and emotions of others. Non-verbal communication is a main theme in the laboratory, as is the context in which the action is presented in. We are developing activation tasks that attempt to mimic real-life situations as closely as possible. Our experiments use combinations of different techniques including behavior, functional MRI, event-related potentials, eye tracking and transcranial magnetic stimulation. The final technique or techniques used are determined by the particular scientific question being asked. The laboratory has multimodal integration capability.
Another research focus is best practices for data acquisition, analysis and sharing of multimodal neuroimaging data,
Current Lab Members
Graduate Student: Kami Salibayeva
Undergraduate Students: Andrew Morales & Devin Seth
Lab Alumni - partial list
Post-doctoral Fellows
Julie A Brefczynski-Lewis - Ph.D. (Neuroscience, Medical College of Wisconsin, USA); now at https://directory.hsc.wvu.edu/Profile/36369
James Thompson, PhD (Brain Sciences Institute) Swinburne University, Australia; now at https://psychology.gmu.edu/people/jthompsz
Svenja Lowitzsch (Ettl), PhD (Mathematics,Texas A&M University, USA); now at Max-Planck Forschungsgruppe, Institut für Optik, Informatik und Photonik, Universität Erlangen- Nürnberg, Germany
Marianne Latinus, PhD (Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Toulouse 3, France); now at https://www.univ-tours.fr/marianne-latinus--697379.kjsp
Scott Love, PhD (Psychology, Glasgow University, Scotland); now at: https://www6.val-de-loire.inra.fr/umrprc-ethologie-neurobiologie/L-equipe/Chercheurs-et-ingenieurs/Scott-Love
Graduate Students
Dr Amy Brodtmann MBBS, PhD (Medicine), from University of Melbourne, Australia; FRACP (Neurology); now Associate Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia (see https://www.florey.edu.au/science-research/scientist-directory/associate-professor-amy-brodtmann)
Dr Jillian Hardee, PhD (Neuroscience) from West Virginia University, Morgantown WV, USA; now Assistant Professor, University of Michigan (see: https://medicine.umich.edu/dept/psychiatry/jillian-hardee-phd)
Dr Francisco J. Parada - PhD (Cognitive Psychology/Neuroscience) from IU Bloomington; now Professor, School of Psychology, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile (see http://neurociencia.udp.cl/en/people/)
Dr Alejandra Rossi - PhD (Cognitive Science/Neuroscience) from IU Bloomington; now Professor, School of Psychology, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile (see http://neurociencia.udp.cl/en/people/)
Dr Elizabeth Bendycki (daSilva) - PhD (Cognitive Neuroscience) from IU Bloomington; now Assistant Professor, Psychology, Indiana University, Columbus, IN, USA (see https://www.iupuc.edu/science/contact-science/liz-dasilva.html)
Dr Benjamin Motz - PhD (Cognitive Science); now Faculty Fellow for Academic Analytics UITS & Research Scientist, Psychological & Brain Sciences, Indiana University Bloomington (see https://motzweb.sitehost.iu.edu/)
Dr Sara Driskell - PhD (Social Psychology); now Visiting Assistant Professor, Psychology, Auburn University
Dr Arian Ashourvan - PhD (Vision Science/Neuroscience); now Postdoctoral fellow, Mirowski Scholar, Bioengineering, Penn State University, Philadephia, USA (see http://cnt.upenn.edu/arian-ashourvan)
Undergraduate Students
Lisa Huang - completed her Senior Honors Thesis in the lab (BS, Psychology at IU Bloomington); now completed PhD in Social Psychology (University of California, Davis, USA), (see https://lisamhuang.wordpress.com/)
Danika Geisler - completed her Senior Honors Thesis in the lab (BS, Cognitive Science at IU Bloomington); now in PhD Program at Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA, (see http://www.dartmouth-socialneurolab.com/people)
Emily Beebe - completed her Senior Honors Thesis in the lab (BS, Psychology at IU Bloomington).

Professional Experience

Honorary Professional Fellow, Florey Neuroscience Institutes, Melbourne, Australia, 2009-present
Eleanor Cox Riggs Professor tenured), Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University (IU), Bloomington, IN, USA, 2008-present
Director, Imaging Research Facility, IU (Bloomington), 2008-2013
Adjunct Professor, Radiology, West Virginia University (WVU), Morgantown, WV, USA, 2008-2013
Professor (tenured), Radiology, WVU, 2008
Professor, Behavioral Medicine & Psychiatry, WVU, 2005-2008
Professor, Neurobiology & Anatomy, WVU, 2002-2008
Professor, Radiology (WVU) (Tenure track), 2002-2008
Director of Neuroimaging, Center for Advanced Imaging, WVU, 2002-2008
Adjunct Professor, Lane Dept of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering, WVU, 2002-2008
Adjunct Professor, Brain Sciences Institute, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2002-present
Principal Research Fellow (Honorary), National Stroke Research Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2002-2009
Deputy Director, Brain Sciences Institute, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2001-2002
Associate Professor (tenure track), Brain Sciences Institute, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 1998-2002
Research Scientist (Honorary), Brain Research Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 1998-2002
Associate Research Scientist, Department of Neurosurgery, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA, 1994-1998
Research Officer, Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 1990-1992

Representative publications

Statistical power: implications for planning MEG studies (2019)
Chaumon M, Puce A, George N
bioRxiv,

Practical guidelines for clinical magnetoencephalography (MEG): Report of an IFCN committee (2018)
Hari R, Baillet S, Barnes G, Burgess R, Forss N, Gross J, Hämäläinen M, Jensen O, Kakigi R, Mauguière F, Nakasato N, Puce A, Romani G, Schnitzler A, Taulu S
Clinical Neurophysiology, 129 1720-1747

Best practices in data analysis and sharing in neuroimaging using MEEG (2018)
Pernet P, Garrido M, Gramfort A, Maurits N, Michel C, Pang E, Salmelin R, Schoffelen JM, Valdes-Sosa PA, Puce A
OSF,

MEG-EEG Primer (2017)
Riitta Hari and Aina Puce
Oxford University Press.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) provide complementary views to the neurodynamics of healthy and diseased human brains. Both methods are totally noninvasive and can track with millisecond temporal resolution spontaneous brain activity, evoked responses to various sensory stimuli, as well as signals associated with the performance of motor, cognitive and affective tasks. MEG records the magnetic fields, and EEG the potentials associated with the same neuronal currents, which however are differentially weighted due to the physical and physiological differences between the methods. MEG is rather selective to activity in the walls of cortical folds, whereas EEG senses currents from the cortex (and brain) more widely, making it harder to pinpoint the locations of the source currents in the brain. Another important difference between the methods is that skull and scalp dampen and smear EEG signals, but do not affect MEG. Hence, to fully understand brain function, information from MEG and EEG should be combined. Additionally, the excellent neurodynamical information these two methods provide can be merged with data from other brain-imaging methods, especially functional magnetic resonance imaging where spatial resolution is a major strength. MEG-EEG Primer is the first-ever volume to introduce and discuss MEG and EEG in a balanced manner side-by-side, starting from their physical and physiological bases and then advancing to methods of data acquisition, analysis, visualization, and interpretation. The authors pay special attention to careful experimentation, guiding readers to differentiate brain …

A review of issues related to data acquisition and analysis in EEG/MEG studies. Invited review: Best Practices in Social Neuroscience (2017)
Puce A, Hämäläinen M
Brain Sciences, 58

The Many Faces of Social Attention (2016)
Aina Puce & Bennett Bertenthal (Eds.)
Springer.

On dissociating the neural time course of the processing of positive emotions (2016)
daSilva EB, Crager K, Puce A
Neuropsychologia, 123-137

Something to sink your teeth into: The presence of teeth augments ERPs to mouth expressions (2016)
daSilva EB, Crager K, Geisler D, Newbern P, Orem B, Puce A
NeuroImage, 227-241

Chapter 4. Neural bases for social attention in healthy humans. In: The Many Faces of Social Attention: Behavioral and Neural Measures (Eds. Puce A & Bertenthal B) (2016)
Puce A, Latinus M, Rossi A, daSilva E, Parada FJ, Love S, Ashourvan A, Jayaraman S
Springer. 93-127

Social decisions affect neural activity to perceived dynamic gaze (2015)
Latinus M, Love SA, Rossi A, Parada FJ, Huang L, Conty L, George N, James K, Puce A
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10 1557-1567

Neural activity differences elicited to viewing gaze changes in real and line-drawn faces (2015)
Rossi A, Parada FJ, Latinus M, Puce A.
Frontiers in Human Neurosci, 185

Neural correlates of apparent motion perception of impoverished facial stimuli: A comparison of ERP and ERSP activity (2014)
Rossi, A, Parada FJ, Kolchinsky A, Puce A.
NeuroImage, 442-459

Sustained neural activity to gaze and emotion perception in dynamic social scenes (2014)
Ulloa JL, Puce A, Hugueville L, George N
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9 350-357

Chapter 10. Perception of nonverbal cues. Invited review. In: Ochsner K, Kosslyn SM. Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Neuroscience, Volume 2 (2013)
Puce A. (2013)
Oxford: Oxford University Press. 148-164

The left amygdala knows fear: laterality in the amygdala response to fearful eyes (2008)
Jillian E Hardee, James C Thompson and Aina Puce
Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 3 (1), 47-54

The detection of threat is a role that the amygdala plays well, evidenced by its increased response to fearful faces in human neuroimaging studies. A critical element of the fearful face is an increase in eye white area (EWA), hypothesized to be a significant cue in activating the amygdala. However, another important social signal that can increase EWA is a lateral shift in gaze direction, which also serves to orient attention to potential threats. It is unknown how the amygdala differentiates between these increases in EWA and those that are specifically associated with fear. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that the left amygdala distinguished between fearful eyes and gaze shifts despite similar EWA increases whereas the right amygdala was less discriminatory. Additional analyses also revealed selective hemispheric response patterns in the left fusiform gyrus. Our data show clear …

Dissertation Committee Service

Dissertation Committee Service
Author	Dissertation Title	Committee
Kim, SunAh	Neural Mechanisms of Multisensory Visuo-Haptic Object Recognition (August 2010)	James, T. (Chair), Puce, A. (Co-Chair), Craig, J., James, K.

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