Elizabeth M. Brannon, Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology

Dr. Elizabeth M. Brannon graduated Summa Cum Laude from The University of Pennsylvania, where she received her B.A. in Physical Anthropology in 1992. In 1994, she received a Masters degree in Anthropology from Columbia where she worked with Dr. Marina Cords. In 2000, she completed a PhD in Psychology in the laboratory of Dr. Herb Terrace. She has been at Duke in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience since the year 2000 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008. She is currently the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and The Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Neuroscience. She maintains a secondary appointment in The Evolutionary Anthropology Department. She has received numerous academic awards and honors including the Young Investigator Award from The Society for Experimental Psychology, a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, a Merck Scholar Award, and a James McDonnell Scholar Award. She is on the editorial board of Psychological Science, Cognition, and Infancy. Dr. Brannon’s research is funded by The National Institutes of Health and The National Science Foundation. Dr. Brannon teaches courses on cognitive development and comparative psychology and maintains two laboratories focused on quantitative cognition in nonhuman primates and human infants.

Contact Info:

Office Location:
Office Phone:	(919) 668-6201, (919) 668-0437
Email Address:
Web Page:	http://www.brannonlab.org

Teaching (Fall 2012):

• PSY 729S.01, FOUNDATIONS OF COG DEVELOPMENT Synopsis

  Soc/Psych 319, M 04:40 PM-07:30 PM

• PSY 757S.01, COG NEURO PRESENTATION I Synopsis

  TBA, Th 12:00 PM-01:05 PM

Education:

PhD	Columbia University	2000
M.A.	Columbia University	1994
B.A. (summa cum laude with distinction in the major)	University of Pennsylvania	1992

Specialties:

Developmental Psychology
Cognition
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience

Research Interests: Development and Evolution of Numerical Abilities

Current projects: Number and time discrimination in infants, Electrophysiological correlates of timing and counting in human infants, Psychophysics of numerical discrimination in monkeys and lemurs, Electrophysiology of number representation in monkeys, Neural correlates of number in adults and children, using fMRI

Dr. Brannon's research program examines the evolution and development of quantitative cognition. She studies how number, time, and spatial extent are represented by adult humans, infants, young children and nonhuman animals without language. With her collaborators at Duke she applies behavioral techniques, event-related potentials, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and single-unit physiology to explore the cognitive and neural underpinnings of numerical cognition in nonhuman primates and throughout the human lifespan.

Areas of Interest:

Cognitive development
Primate cognition
Developmental cognitive neuroscience

Keywords:

numerical cognition • infant cognition • animal cognition

Curriculum Vitae

Current Ph.D. Students   (Former Students)

• Drucker Caroline  

Postdocs Mentored

• JoonKoo Park (2011/12-present)  
• Michal Pinhas (2011/12-present)  
• Dustin Merritt (October 1, 2006 - 2011)  
• Sara Cordes (October 1, 2005 - 2009)  
• Jamie Roitman (August 1, 2005 - June 1, 2006)  
• Donna Lutz (July 15, 2003 - 2005)  
• Kerrie Lewis (January 15, 2003 - 2004)  
• Tatiana Gautier (2002/08-2003/08)  

Representative Publications   (More Publications)   (search)

1. Jordan, K.E., MacLean, E., & Brannon, E.M., Monkeys match and tally quantities across senses, Cognition, vol. 108 no. 3 (2008), pp. 617-625
2. Brannon, E.M., Libertus, M. Meck, W.H., Woldorff, M., Electrophysiological measures of time processing in infant and adult brains: Weber's law holds, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 20 no. 2 (2008), pp. 193-203
3. Cordes, S., Brannon, E.M, The difficulties of representing continuous extent in infancy: Using number is just easier, Child Development, vol. 79 no. 2 (2008), pp. 476-489
4. Cantlon, J.F. & Brannon, E.M., Basic math in monkeys and college students, PLoS Biology, vol. 5 no. 12 (2007), pp. e328
5. Roitman, J., Brannon. E.M. & Platt, M.L., Monotonic coding of numerosity in Macaque lateral intraparietal area, PLoS Biology, vol. 5 no. 8 (2007), pp. e208
6. Brannon E.M., Suanda, U., Libertus, K, Temporal discrimination increases in precision over development and parallels the development of numerosity discrimination, Developmental Science, vol. 10 no. 6 (2007), pp. 770-777
7. Brannon, E.M., The representation of numerical magnitude, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, vol. 16 (2006), pp. 222-229
8. Cantlon, J., & Brannon, E.M., Carter, E.J., & Pelphrey, K., Functional imaging of numerical processing in adults and 4-y-old children, PLOS Biology, vol. 4 no. 5 (2006), pp. e125, 1-11

Sara Cordes - Post-doc, Dustin Merritt - Post-doc, Jessica Cantlon - visiting Post-doc, Melissa Libertus- Graduate Student (year 5), David Paulsen Graduate student (year 2), Sarah M. Jones Graduate student (year 2), Emily Hopkins (infant lab manager), Monica Carlson (monkey lab manager),