Taylor Schmitz

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Education:

- BS with honors, Psychology, University of Wisconsin - Madison (2002)
- PhD, University of Toronto (in progress) Collaborative Program in Neuroscience (Psychology)

Additional experience: I held a research specialist position in Dr. Sterling Johnson's neuroimaging and neuropsychology laboratory at the University of Wisconsin - Madison Department of Medicine (Fall 2002 - Spring 2006). I assisted in Dr. Johnson's multidisciplinary lab with data collection and analysis for two longitudinal functional/quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies, one focusing on neural recover/plasticity after traumatic brain injury, and the other on neural bases of memory decline in healthy and pathological aging (e.g. mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's Disease).

CV: [click here]

Attention and Emotion

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Current research questions include:

(1a) What are the neural correlates of our capacity to maintain both task-relevant and irrelevant (i.e. ignored) information over time?

(1b) Are discrete systems engaged by shifts in the attribution of relevance when task demands change?

(2) How are these systems affected by normative ageing?

(3) How are these systems influenced by emotional states?

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  • Menon M, Schmitz TW, Anderson AK, Graff A, Korostil M, Mamo D, Gerretsen P, Addington J, Remington G, Kapur S. (2011). Exploring the neural correlates of delusions of reference. Biological Psychiatry, 70, 1127-33.
  • Schmitz TW, Cheng FH, De Rosa E (2010). Failing to ignore: paradoxical neural effects of perceptual load on early attentional selection in normal aging. Journal of Neuroscience, 30, 14750-8.
  • Schmitz TW, De Rosa E, Anderson AK, (2009) Opposing influences of affective state valence on visual cortical encoding. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(22):7199-7207
  • Trivedi MA, Schmitz TW, Ries ML, Hess TM, Fitzgerald ME, Atwood CS, Rowley HA, Asthana S, Sager MA, Johnson SC (2007) fMRI activation during episodic encoding and metacognitive appraisal across the lifespan: Risk factors for Alzheimer's disease. Neuropsychologia, 46(6):1667-78.
  • Schmitz TW, Johnson SC. (2007). Relevance to self: A brief review and framework of neural systems underlying appraisal. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 31(4):585-96.
  • Johnson SC, Schmitz TW, Trivedi MA, Ries ML, Torgerson BM, Carlsson CM, Asthana S, Hermann BP, Sager MA (2006). The influence of Alzheimer disease family history and apolipoprotein E epsilon4 on mesial temporal lobe activation. Journal of Neuroscience, 31;26(22):6069-76.
  • Schmitz TW, Johnson SC (2006). Self-appraisal decisions evoke dissociated dorsal-ventral aMPFC networks. Neuroimage, 15;30(3):1050-8.
  • Johnson SC, Schmitz TW, Moritz CH, Meyerand ME, Rowley HA, Alexander AL, Hansen KW, Gleason CE, Carlsson CM, Ries ML, Asthana S, Chen K, Reiman EM, Alexander GE (2006) Activation of brain regions vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease: the effect of mild cognitive impairment. Neurobiology of Aging, 27(11):1604-12
  • Schmitz TW, Rowley HA, Kawahara TN, Johnson SC (2006). Neural correlates of self-evaluative accuracy after traumatic brain injury. Neuropsychologia, 44(5):762-73.
  • Johnson SC, Schmitz TW, Kawahara-Baccus TN, Rowley HA, Alexander AL, Lee J, Davidson RJ (2005). The cerebral response during subjective choice with and without self-reference. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17(12):1897-906.
  • Schmitz TW, Kawahara-Baccus TN, Johnson SC (2004). Metacognitive evaluation, self-relevance, and the right prefrontal cortex. Neuroimage, 22(2):941-7.