Professor

Graduate Training: University of Melbourne, Australia
Fellowship: Yale University Medical School

Department of Radiology
Director of Neuroimaging, Center for Advanced Imaging
West Virginia University School of Medicine
One Medical Center Drive
PO Box 9236 Health Sciences Center
Morgantown, WV 26506-9236
t: 304-293-5016
f: 304-293-4287
e: apuce@hsc.wvu.edu

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Description of Research

Our main research focus is the neural basis of social cognition, where we are trying to understand how the brain makes sense of the actions and intentions of others. This work spans perceptual mechanisms that process basic biological motion to higher order aspects of social cognition, such as theory of mind. Our work includes the study of healthy volunteers, as well as individuals with neurological and psychiatric disorders. Our research techniques include functional MRI, ERPs and TMS, and multimodal integration of these data.

The illustrations below are examples of brain activation elicited to viewing human motion in its whole vs. fragmented form.

Clip of Intact Motion
Clip of Apart Motion

Note that temporal brain regions are more sensitive to motion of whole bodies, whereas the parietal brain regions responded more to moving fragmented bodies or body parts. (Click on Images to Enlarge)