Cognitive Neuropsychology Lab

The Cognitive Neuropsychology Lab at Teachers College, Columbia University Richard Waxman, PhD, director of the Cognitive Neuropsychology lab at Teachers College, Columbia University, focuses his professional interests on the clinical and research manifestations of cognitive neuropsychology in the expression of several neurocognitive disorders, including schizophrenia, acquired and degenerative brain injury, and PTSD. Currently, the CNL lab has focused its research endeavors on four areas. These include: perceptual organization, event segmentation, Allocentric and egocentric spatial route learning, and rehabilitative implications of varying levels of resilience in the efficacy of family caregiving for adults recovering from acquired brain injury. The CNL lab research activities are primarily conducted at the TC Columbia campus, although it maintains affiliations with several hospitals and healthcare centers in the NYC area. As a particular benefit, the CNL lab maintains a relationship with the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, where our lab collaborates with the Rambam Medical Center neuroimaging unit to investigate the neurophysiological mechanisms of allocentric route learning.

Research assistants in our lab include clinical psychology, counseling, and neuroscience graduate students from TC, as well as undergraduate students from both Barnard and Columbia University. We also encourage students outside of Columbia to participate in the lab, and presently, we have several students from NYC and universities around the country participating as RAs.

While our primary goal is to pursue an understanding of the neurocognitive topics we have chosen to investigate, it remains equally important to view our lab as a learning opportunity for students wishing to gain insight into the many facets of neurocognitive research.