Phone: (412) 268-2791
Fax: (412) 268-2804
Email: just@cmu.edu

Individual Website: http://www.ccbi.cmu.edu

Ph.D., Stanford University

Research Interests

My 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. Cereb Cortex 17: 951-961, 2007.
• Just MA, Varma S: The organization of thinking: What functional brain imaging reveals about the neuroarchitecture of complex cognition. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 7: 153-191, 2007.
• Meyler 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. Cereb Cortex, in press.
• Prat C, Keller TA, Just MA: Individual differences in sentence comprehension: An fMRI investigation of syntactic and lexical processing demands. J Cogn Neurosci in press.
• Mason RA, Just, MA: Neuroimaging contributions to the understanding of discourse processes. In M Traxler and MA Gernsbacher (eds.), Handbook of Psycholinguistics: 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.

These articles can be downloaded from www.ccbi.cmu.edu/reprints/reprints.htm