I received my doctoral training at Columbia University (1997-2002) and postdoctoral training at Yale University (2003-2007). Following my postdoctoral training, I was hired as an Assistant Professor of Social Cognitive Neuroscience at San Francisco State University (where I am director of the Action and Consciousness Laboratory) and as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. To illuminate the nature of the basic nonconscious and conscious (e.g., urges, impulse control, working memory) mechanisms in human action production, my research integrates experimental approaches that are cognitive, affective, neurobiological, and social cognitive. Specifically, to understand the nature of these mechanisms, I have investigated action production at different levels of analysis and in different contexts, including simple actions, subjective urges, working memory, speech production, social action, and language use (communication cognition). Thus, my approach is broadly based in terms of dependent measures: cognitive, affective, social, and neurobiological.
My investigations fall broadly into three primary research lines.
Line 1: Action-related determinants of what enters consciousness.
Representative paradigms and topics: backward masking, binocular rivalry, inattentional blindness, change blindness, prospective memory
Line 2: Action-related subjective modulations of processes that are already consciously available.
Representative paradigms and topics: self-control, interference paradigms (e.g., Stroop, MSIT, flanker, and Simon tasks), authorship processing, valence from processing, sense of agency
Line 3: Actional components of mental representation.
Representative paradigms and topics: indirect cognitive control, ideomotor processing, embodied cognition, automatic imitation, priming, motor components of semantic representation, folk theories about action production
In trying to understand the nature of complex nonconscious processes, one eventually encounters the thorny question, "Then what is consciousness for?" I have developed a theoretical framework (Supramodular Interaction Theory [SIT] and the PRISM principle) explaining the primary function of conscious states (see below, Psychological Review, 2005). I had the honor and pleasure of presenting this framework in an invited talk to the Harvard Department of Psychology. As well, the theory was covered in the media by MSNBC and the BBC.
I was Born in Buenos Aires in 1974 and raised in the US since the age of six. I was interested in experimental psychology and what was then called psychobiology since my middle school days in Miami, when I came across books by Clark Hull and Donald Hebb. Later, I was mentored by Robert B. Tallarico at the University of Miami (B.A., 1996, Phi Beta Kappa, Cum Laude). I received my Ph.D. working with Robert M. Krauss at Columbia University. From fall 2003 till fall 2007, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow (NIH NRSA Award) at Yale University, working with John Bargh.
In collaboration with Krauss, I have investigated the role of hand-arm gestures in speech production; tip-of-the-tongue states; models of speech production; embodied cognition; speaker perception (the "vocal embodiment of speech"), and "The Motor Components of Semantic Representation" (my dissertation, supported by the Richard Christie Memorial Award, Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: the Sciences & Engineering, 63, 4B). This research on gestures and cognition has appeared on NBC's Dateline America, ABC's Good Morning America, and Globo TV.
I also collaborated with Michele Miozzo on projects concerning automatic processes in speech production, showing, for example, that the phonological representations of words can be activated even when those words are not selected for production (e.g., activating the /b/ phoneme by merely staring at a bell), an effect that has been replicated in the Spanish language and in several English variants of the paradigm.
The Function of Consciousness: Supramodular Interaction Theory
There is a consensus that conscious states integrate neural activities and information-processing that would otherwise be independent. However, it has remained unspecified which kinds of information are integrated in a conscious manner and which kinds can be integrated without consciousness. Not all kinds of integrative processes require conscious states (e.g., neural activity related to vegetative functions, reflexes, unconscious motor programs, low-level perceptual analyses, and intersensory interactions such as the ventriloquism effect).
SIT is unique in that it explains the primary role of consciousness by comparing the task demands of consciously-penetrable processes (e.g., pain and breathlessness) and consciously-impenetrable processes (e.g., the pupillary reflex). SIT proposes that these states are required to integrate high-level systems in the brain that are vying for (specifically) skeletomotor control, as described by the principle of parallel responses into skeletal muscle (PRISM). From this point of view, consciousness functions above the level of the traditional module to permit cross-talk among specialized, and often multi-modal, systems. For example, regarding a process such as digestion, one is conscious of only those phases of the process that require coordination with skeletal muscle plans (e.g., chewing).
In collaboration with John Bargh, Jeremy Gray, Adam Gazzaley, and Mark Geisler, I am evaluating SIT using behavioral and neuroimaging techniques. In addition, with the assistance of the neurologist Stephen Krieger, I am examining the implications that SIT has for disorders of awareness.