People

Louise D. Cosand, B.A.

Louise Cosand has been a Clinical Neuroscience graduate student since the fall of 2005.  She earned a B.A. in Behavioral Neuroscience, with a minor in Biology, from Colgate University in 2003. 

Louise’s research interests center around inhibition.  For example, the amygdala and prefrontal cortex seem to modulate fear via inhibition of the amygdala by the prefrontal cortex.  Can humans influence that process?  For example, people are able to watch horror movies by telling themselves, “It’s just a movie.”  On the other hand, a person with a phobia can tell him- or herself, “The snake is in a terrarium, it can’t get me” without quelling the fear enough to look at the snake.  Louise hopes to understand how stress, and the related endogeneous chemicals, influence emotion and its inhibition.

telephone: (213) 740-2297     email: cosand@usc.edu     office: SGM 911

Christopher G. Courtney, B.A.

Christopher Courtney is 4th year cognitive neuroscience student at the University of Southern California.  He earned his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Southern California in 2003. 

Christopher's current research involves investigating the psychophysiological correlates of virtual reality exposure to aid in the development of a human computer interface (HCI). This HCI will allow for changes in a virtual environment to occur as a response to changes in a person's physiological state brought about by events experienced in the virtual environment.

telephone: (213) 740-2297     email: cgcourtn@usc.edu     office: SGM 911