Joseph Dien

Dr. Dien is a cognitive neuroscientist who uses methods of event-related potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging to study issues of left brain/right brain asymmetries.  According to his Janus Model (Dien, 2008), the left hemisphere uses a prospective approach to act on anticipated events while the right hemisphere uses a retrospective approach to detect and react to unexpected events.  Much of his research on this topic is in the domain of lateralized reading comprehension processes, especially attentional effects on early latency stages.  He is also interested in how anxiety and stress can be understood as lateralized regulatory processes that modulate these neurocognitive systems.  Finally, in order to investigate these issues, he has been developing and advancing multivariate statistical procedures for isolating and localizing event-related potentials.