People

Lab Director John Paul Minda

Department of Psychology
Western Institute for Neuroscience
Western University
London Ontario Canada N6A 5C2
email jpminda @ uwo.ca
tel 519 661-2111 ext 84689
fax 519 661-3961

Current Lab Members

Priya Kalra, PhD — BrainsCAN postdoctoral fellow

Dr. Kalra studies implicit learning—that is, learning without effort or awareness of what has been learned. There is increasing evidence that developing expertise or fluency in these domains involves not only the accumulation of information, but changes in the way that information is represented. Dr. Kalra works with Dr. Minda, Dr. Laura Batterink, Dr. Marc Joanisse and used a combination of behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging techniques to characterize these shifts.

Bailey Brashears

Bailey Brashears is a PhD student studying cognition and memory within the Minecraft framework. She has also carried out research on category learning and feature naming.

Brashears, B., & Minda, J. P. (2020). The Effects of Feature Verbalizablity on Category Learning. In S. Denison., M. Mack, Y. Xu, & B.C. Armstrong (Eds.), Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Cognitive Science Society. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gfh4a
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  • Website

Anthony Cruz

Anthony Cruz is a PhD student studying category learning in ecologically valid settings by using smartphones to present stimuli and collect data. You can read about Anthony’s work here: 

Cruz, Anthony (2022) The Spacing Effect in Remote Information-Integration Category Learning. Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 8718. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/8718

Tim Qiu

Tim is a second year MSc student in neuroscience working with fNIRS optical neuroimaging and category learning. Tim has also worked on a project looking at the connection between psychedelic used and mindfulness that was published in 2022.

Qiu, T. T. & Minda, J. P. (2022). Psychedelic experiences and mindfulness are associated with improved wellbeing, The Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2022.2060773

Julia Ignaszewski

Julia is a second year Psychology MSc student studying mood and category learning and exploring VR technology.

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  • Website

Chelsea McKenzie

Chelsea is a Psychology MSc student examining categorization and cognitive effort and has also studied the conceptual nature of cities and town.

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Lab Alumni