Ph.D., Stanford University Research InterestsMy research uses brain imaging (fMRI) in high-level cognitive tasks to study the neuroarchitecture of cognition. The fMRI studies examine how a network of brain areas activates during the performance of language comprehension, spatial thinking, problem-solving, and dual-task performance in complex environments. The empirical results are used interactively in the development of a computational architecture (called 4CAPS) that provides a mapping between cognitive function and brain activation. Models written in 4CAPS attempt to account for the behavioral performance (response times and accuracies) as well as the amounts and locations of the brain activations. I work with a large group of researchers of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging (where I am Co-Director) and collaborate extensively with biostatisticians at Carnegie Mellon and with researchers at UPMC.Recent Publications- Just MA, Cherkassky VL, Keller TA, Kana RK, Minshew NJ: Functional and anatomical cortical underconnectivity in autism: Evidence from an fMRI study of an executive function task and corpus callosum morphometry. Cerebral Cortex, 17: 951-961, 2007.
- Just MA, Varma S: The organization of thinking: What functional brain imaging reveals about the neuroarchitecture of complex cognition. Cognitive Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 7: 153-191, 2007.
- Meyer A, Keller TA, Cherkassky VL, Lee D, Hoeft F, Whitfield-Gabrieli S, Gabrieli JDE, Just MA: Brain activation during sentence comprehension among good and poor readers. Cerebral cortex, in press.
- Prat C, Keller TA, Just MA: Individual differences in sentence comprehension: An fMRI investigation of syntactic and lexical processing demands. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, in press.
- Mason RA, Just, MA: Neuroimaging contributions to the understanding of discourse processes. In M Traxler and MA Gernsbacher (Eds.), Handbook of Psycholinguistics (pp. 765-799): Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006.
- Mitchell T, Hutchinson R, Niculescu RS, Pereira F, Wang X, Jus MA, Newman SD: Learning to decode cognitive states from brain images. Machine Learning, 57: 145-175, 2004.
- Just MA, Carpenter PA, Keller TA, Emery L, Zajac H, Thulborn KR: Interdependence of non-overlapping cortical systems in dual cognitive tasks. NeuroImage, 14: 417-426, 2001.
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