Joe Moran, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Associate

Office: 46-5081

Telephone: (617) 324-5124

Email: jmmoran@mit.edu

bio

I received an M.Sc. in Cognitive Science from the University of Birmingham (UK) before heading to Dartmouth to begin a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience, working with Bill Kelley. My research is focused mainly on investigating the neural representation of cognitive and affective elements of self. My Ph.D. work was comprised of investigations into the neural and behavioral consequences of automatic attentional orienting to self-relevant stimuli. I joined the Gabrieli lab in July of 2006 and am beginning to extend this work into the patient domain, specifically studying autism. A related focus of my work here is to foster theoretical links between the traditionally parallel lines of research into self and Theory-of-Mind.

publications

Whitfield-Gabrieli, S.*, Moran, J.M.*, Saxe, R. and Gabrieli, J.D.E. (in prep.) Dissociable Contributions of Cortical Midline Structures During Rest and Self-referential Processing. *equal authorship.

Moran, J.M., Sokol-Hessner, P., Wolford, G.L., and Kelley, W.M. (in prep). Dissociating Reward Anticipation from Reward Outcome: An Event-related fMRI Study of Nucleus Accumbens Behavior.

Saxe, R., Moran J.M., Scholz, J.K. and Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2006). Overlapping and non-overlapping brain regions for theory of mind and self reflection in individual subjects. Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 1(3), 229-234.

Moran, J.M., Wyland, C.L., Macrae, C.N., Heatherton, T.F., and Kelley, W.M. (2006). Neuroanatomical Evidence for Distinct Cognitive and Affective Components of Self. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18(9), 1-9.

Moran, J.M., Wig, G.S., Adams, R.B., Janata, P., and Kelley, W.M. (2004). Neural correlates of humor detection and appreciation. NeuroImage, 21, 1055-1060.

Macrae, C.N., Moran, J.M., Heatherton, T.F., Banfield, J.F., and Kelley, W.M. (2004). Medial Prefrontal Activity Predicts Memory for Self-Knowledge. Cerebral Cortex, 14, 647-654.

posters and talks

Moran, J.M., Heatherton, T.F., and Kelley, W.M. (2006). Automatic Attention to Self-relevant Stimuli is Instantiated by Medial Prefrontal Cortex. Atlanta, GA, Society for Neuroscience.

Moran, J.M., Wyland, C.L., Macrae, C.N., Heatherton, T.F., and Kelley, W.M. (2004). Feeling and Knowing: Dissociating Cognition and Emotion in the Multifaceted Self. San Diego, Society for Neuroscience.

Moran, J.M., Taplin, A., Kelley, W.M. (2004). Beauty and the Brain: the Neural Correlates of Facial Attractiveness. San Francisco, Cognitive Neuroscience Society.

Moran, J.M., Motsinger, J., Kelley, W.M. (2003). The Sound of Memory: Prefrontal Lateralization during Memory Encoding. New Orleans, Society for Neuroscience.

Moran, J.M., Banfield, J.F., Macrae, C.N., Heatherton, T.F., Kelley, W.M. (2002). Activity in Medial Prefrontal Cortex Predicts Subsequent Memory for Words Judged in Reference to the Self. Orlando, Society for Neuroscience.

Rule, N.O., Moran, J.M., Freeman, J.B., Gabrieli, J.D.E., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S. and Ambady, N. (in press)Amygdala activity predicts companies’ and executives’ success. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience