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Research Interests
1. Functional organization and dissociation of the MD network
Concurrent TMS-fMRI setup at MRC-CBU
A distributed "multiple-demand" (MD) network across the frontoparietal brain regions is thought to be crucial for human intelligent behaviours because of its incredible function to flexibly and adaptively process task-relevant information. Although this network is commonly co-activated during demanding tasks, potential functional differentiation among MD regions has long been discussed but no clear consensus yet. My research aims to use concurrent TMS-fMRI to causally examine the distinct contributions of the individual MD regions. In particular, I ask whether more parietal areas (e.g., intraparietal sulcus) and more frontal areas (e.g., dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex) work differently in terms of enhancement vs inhibition during selective processing of visual information.
Multiple-demand network (Assem et al., 2020; Duncan, 2010; Fedorenko et al., 2013)
2. The causal role of alpha oscillation in selective attention
Selective attention is a fundamental cognitive mechanism that allows our brain to prioritize relevant information and suppress distracting information. Neural oscillation in the alpha band (8-12 Hz) around parietal and occipital regions is suggested to play an important role in spatial attention. However, it's not clear how parietal alpha activity causally influences information coding during spatial attention and feature-selective attention. In this study, I will use rhythmic TMS to entrain individual alpha activity in the parietal regions. With the concurrent EEG recording, I'll check the causal role of alpha activity in coding spatial attention and feature-selective attention.
Alpha oscillation and spatial attention (e.g., Peylo et al., 2021)
Concurrent TMS-EEG study
3. Cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying fluid intelligence
To find the neural mechanisms underlying human intelligence is one of the most attractive questions in psychological science. In specific, this series of work mainly focused on how people with higher fluid intelligence (Gf) allocate their limited attentional resources in tasks with varying demands. Based on a detailed literature review and a theoretical analysis, this work proposed a novel hypothesis (i.e., integrated control hypothesis) and conducted both pupillometry (Lu, Bao, Zhang, & Shi, 2022) and EEG studies (Lu, Xi, Zhang, & Shi, 2022) to provide preliminary empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis. Besides, we took a pilot study using pupillometry to link teenagers' tonic pupil size with fluid intelligence (Lu et al., 2021a), which suggests eye-movement characteristics are promising to use for individual difference studies in cognitive abilities (Lu et al., 2021b). In addition to this work, I'm also very interested in studying human intelligence based on the multiple-demand domain-general network (see Duncan et al., 2020).
Integrated control hypothesis (Lu et al., 2022a, 2022b)
4. Cognitive development and intervention in children
A large part of my previous work focused on cognitive development and intervention for children lacking support. During my undergraduate studies, I was in charge of a project focused on investigating and intervening in mental health problems (e.g., suicide ideation) in left-behind children in rural China (Lu et al., 2017; Lu et al., 2018; Lu et al., 2019).
In the past few years, with the cooperation of NGOs, I have been to many impoverished areas in China for investigation and have been developing effective and feasible interventions to improve the mental development status of underprivileged children. One of the projects I was involved in called "One Village One Preschool" led by CDRF has won the prestigious 2018 WISE Awards. (CDRF 'One Village One Preschool' Project et al., 2021).
CDRF 'One Village One Preschool' Project, led by CDRF
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