D. O. Hebb Professor of Psychology Director, Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging Co-Director, Brain Imaging Research Center Carnegie Mellon University Email: just@cmu.edu Phone: 412-268-2791 Fax: 412-268-2804 Assistant: Paulette Williams, 412-268-1721 Research Program Dr. Just's research uses brain imaging (fMRI) in high-level cognitive tasks to study the neural basis of the architecture of cognition.  The fMRI studies attempt to determine the underlying cortical components of the cognitive system and the nature of the collaboration among the components in many different types of tasks. The individual research projects investigate high level cognition, particularly language and spatial thinking, such as sentence comprehension, mental rotation, imagery, object recognition, problem-solving, and decision-making. The fMRI results are being used in the development of a theory of cognition based on the dynamic, collaborative activity of the relevant cortical components, each drawing on its own set of relative specializations. This theory provides a mapping between cognitive function and brain activation.

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The general approach is being applied to the study of special populations, such as people with autism and children with reading problems. Leadership Positions and Honors Visiting Scholar, University of Oslo, 1970-1971 Fellow, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, 1982-1983 Former Province of Quebec Scholar and Canada Council Research Fellow Recipient of the NIMH Research Scientist Development Award, NIMH Research Scientist Award, and NIMH Senior Scientist Award Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science  Outstanding Research Award, Advisory Board on Autism and Related Disorders (ABOARD) Representative Publications  Just MA, Newman SD, Keller TA, McEleney A, Carpenter PA: Imagery in sentence comprehension: An fMRI study.  NeuroImage 21:112-124, 2004. 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, in press. Mason RA, Just MA:  Neuroimaging contributions to the understanding of discourse processes. In:  M Traxler, MA Gernsbacher (Eds), Handbook of Psycholinguistics (2nd ed), pp. 765-799,  Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006. 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.

Revised 9/5/2007  la/tc