ABOUT JOEY

Joey graduated with his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of California Davis and the California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC) in June 2024. His research interests center around the neural basis of embodied cognitive and affective states, including self-awareness and the impact of internal states on broad psychological processes including decision making, attention, and memory. He is deeply interested in understanding cross-species conservation of the neurobiology supporting these functions and he works primarily with rhesus macaque monkeys. In September 2024 he began a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Erin Rich, Associate Professor of Neural Science. He followed the Rich laboratory from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to the Center for Neural Science at New York University (NYU). In his postdoctoral fellowship, he is learning acute and chronic neurophysiological recording techniques in tandem with neuromodulatory approaches. His postdoctoral training is currently funded by a Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F32MH143408).

During his PhD, Joey utilized a variety of methods to address his research questions. He has expertise in training and testing monkeys on cognitive and affective tasks using touch screens, eye tracking (with and without autonomic nervous system data collection), and manual (e.g., WGTA) testing. He also has extensive experience carrying out neuroanatomical experiments in monkeys, using histological and neuroimaging techniques (structural and functional MRI, in collaboration with Dr. Erika Raven). His PhD research has been published in multiple scientific journals, including PNAS, Cerebral Cortex, Imaging Neuroscience, Brain Structure and Function, and more. A review article he authored on cross-species comparative anatomy of the insula is forthcoming in Nature Neuroscience.

Joey carried out his doctoral work under the advisement of Dr. Eliza Bliss-Moreau, Professor of Psychology and was supported by a Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F31AG077797) from the National Institute on Aging. A native New Yorker, in May 2019, Joey graduated summa cum laude from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. At Gallatin he crafted an interdisciplinary concentration titled Brain Science: Mind, Music, and History. His concentration drew from the myriad fields that he is interested in, including neuroscience, psychiatry, ethics, music, history of science, and philosophy of science. He carried out the research for this senior thesis, The role of observational learning in acquisition of an auditory task, in Dr. Dan Sanes’ laboratory at the NYU Center for Neural Science, where he worked closely with Drs. Todd M. Mowery and Nihaad Paraouty. He was awarded Departmental Honors for his thesis at graduation. Joey could not be happier to be back on the east coast and back at NYU for his postdoctoral fellowship.