Julie A. Fiez, PhD

  • Professor, Psychology

Phone

412-624-7078

E-mail

fiez@pitt.edu

Personal Website

https://sites.google.com/pitt.edu/fiezlab

Education & Training

PhD, Washington University (1992)

Campus Address

605 Learning Research Development Center

One-Line Research Description

Neuroimaging and behavioral studies of language, working memory, motivation, and learning

My lab relies upon a broad-based and interdisciplinary cognitive neuroscience approach to address questions that fall within two predominant strands of research. One strand is focused on the neural basis of language processing. Topics of interest include the articulatory and phonological codes involved in verbal working memory, and the ways in which different writing systems influence the representation and processing of orthographic information. A second strand is focused on basic learning systems in the human brain. We are especially interested in how cognition may be optimized by reinforcement learning signals mediated by the basal ganglia and error-correction signals mediated by the cerebellum.

Representative Publications

Hirshorn EA, Li Y, Ward M, Richardson RM, Fiez JA, Guhman AS (2016). Decoding and disrupting left mid-fusiform gyrus activity during word reading. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113:8162-8167.

Tremel JJ, Ortiz DM, Fiez JA (2018). Initial encoding experiences impact the strategies and neural systems that mediate subsequent decision-making. Neuropsychologia, 114:214-230.

Liu R, Schunn CD, Fiez JA, Libertus ME (2018). The integration between non-symbolic and symbolic numbers: Evidence from an EEG study. Brain and Behavior, 8:e00938.

Alvarez T, Fiez JA (2018). Current perspectives on the cerebellum and reading development. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 92:55-66.