Christopher Bartlett Ph.D.

Ohio State University

Christopher Bartlett, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Mathematical Medicine at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital at the The Ohio State University, in USA. His long-term goal is to understand the molecular neurobiology of human language. However, more so than any other cognitive neuroscience topic, the neurobiology of language is quite resistant to use of animal models except in extremely circumscribed ways. Christopher’s approach is to use “forward genetics” whereby we map language and related traits into the human genome in language impaired patient and family studies using a mix of statistics and genomics. This work entails three levels of basic research and experimentation that feed into the larger project. 1) Statistical genetics research where we develop the statistical methods necessary to directly model and thereby answer our specific research questions. This work involves both analytical and computational methods. 2) Molecular genetic methods and assay development to generate the raw data used in our analyses. 3) Studies of gene expression in the human brain using methods that are similar to those for mapping cognitive traits, but these research questions involve finding directly functional genomic elements that are active in the human brain, such polymorphisms are good candidates’ biomarkers and mediators of cognitive performance.

Erika Wauthia, PhD

Université de Mons (UMons), Belgium

Erika Wauthia Ph.D. is a Post-Doctoral researcher in the Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology department at the University of Mons, in Belgium.  Her research mainly focuses on the understanding of the electrophysiological correlates of the cognitive mechanisms underlying pediatric anxiety disorders. She is particularly interested in the preferential attentional processing of threatening cues from the perspective of attentional control deficits in this population, through the use of event-related potentials (ERPs). However, given that the ongoing development of the brain in this age range may lead to changes in ERPs temporalities or topographies, she uses a data-driven approach to analyse children’s brain signals and determine which ERPs components can be treated as potential neuromarkers of anxiety disorders and of anxiety treatment efficacy.

Julia Eberlen, PhD

Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

Julia Eberlen first heard about the so-called “replication crisis” during her master’s in Neuropsychology at  the Université libre de Bruxelles and became seriously interested in the movement aiming to increase transparency and replicability in the psychological sciences and beyond. She pursued this interest as a side topic during her thesis on stereotype learning, under the supervision of Prof. Olivier Klein and Dr. Matteo Gagliolo at the ULB. She is particularly interested in the practicalities of the methods proposed by open science advocates, including tools to support theory development and how to keep up the line between the necessary protection of participants’ privacy and the demand for openly accessible research data. As part of her current role as the research manager of the faculty of psychological and educational sciences at the ULB, she supports researchers in their pursuit of robust, replicable science.

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