LaBar Named Associate Director of Center for Cognitive Neuroscience

Kevin S. LaBar, professor of psychology & neuroscience in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, will serve as associate director for Center for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN). Dr. R. Alison Adcock, CCN director, announced this week. LaBar’s appointment was made in consultation with CCN faculty and other members of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences (DIBS) community. 

“Dr. LaBar was an early member of the CCN and helped establish its international reputation,” Adcock said. “We are fortunate that Kevin will now to bring to bear his experience, acquired in multiple prior leadership roles at Duke, including Division Director in Psychology and Neuroscience, CNAP Director of Graduate Studies and DIBS Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies in Neuroscience, on behalf of CCN as we continue to grow our programs.”

The CCN, a part of DIBS, focuses on research and education in the psychological, computational, and biological mechanisms of higher mental function. CCN faculty examine the variability in these mechanisms among individuals, across the lifespan, and between species. They also explore application of these mechanisms to real-world problems and their dissolution in disease and mental disorders.

LaBar’s research focuses on understanding how emotional events modulate cognitive processes in the human brain. He and his lab aim to identify brain regions that encode the emotional properties of sensory stimuli, and to show how these regions interact with neural systems supporting social cognition, executive control, and learning and memory. With Len White, he co-directs the Undergraduate Studies in Neuroscience program.