Jared Reser Statement of Research Interests My personal and professional goal is to continue my efforts to make a contribution to society as a research scientist. I am highly intrinsically motivated to continue publishing in my areas of interest, and I am constantly pushing myself to generate and refine scientific hypotheses. My main focus, evident in my websites, blog and articles, is to develop theories that help to integrate cognitive psychology, clinical neuroscience and integrative biology. I also intend to extend the graduate work that I have done in collaboration with others and continue researching the cognitive foundations of belief and the implications that beliefs have for mental and metabolic health. In the spring of 2012, I finished a Ph.D. in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences division of the Psychology Department at USC under faculty advisor, Dr. David Walsh. Work experience in academic, research-oriented and commercial jobs has afforded me a wide breadth of knowledge and skills. These experiences have helped me to develop confidence and competency in reviewing and analyzing literature, designing experiments, and developing research manuscripts. I have prior experience with fMRI, EEG, Qualtrics, web design and some psychophysiological techniques. The essays and articles on my personal websites and blog should attest to my writing ability, web design skills and breadth of interests. I feel like my best selling point is my inexhaustible passion for clinical neuroscience and cognitive psychology. I read avidly in my personal time and I am well versed in a very broad array of psychological and neuroscientific literature. The materials listed under publications in my vita contain well over 2,000 references and amount to more than 600 single-spaced pages. I have over 2,000 pages of copyrighted but unpublished scientific writings which I hope to refine toward various articles and books. I am now developing four books. The first book is about consciousness and working memory; the second concerns the adaptive value of intelligence; the third is on altruism, mindfulness and their neurobiological correlates; and I am now writing a second book on belief, its neural underpinnings and its philosophical implications. I am currently finishing an article about the epigenetics underlying the neural degeneration in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex that occurs during chronic stress. The article on chronic stress represents a comprehensive analysis of the stress cascade phenomenon in terms of both the epigenetics that underlie it and the selective pressures that may be responsible for it. I develop a small number of cohesive and straightforward hypotheses based on the disease’s epidemiological patterns, neurological selectivity, clinical and psychiatric presentations and similarities to known, adaptive syndromes in animals. It is well accepted that analyzing disease states from an evolutionary or comparative perspective can ultimately do much to inform and influence medical intervention strategies. The article goes even further than this though and identifies specific metabolic and molecular pathways that I think are critical, and must be targeted by medical investigation. I consider related topics to constitute an ongoing research endeavor and I am currently developing a number of related articles. I have also begun to write an article on neural synchrony on the level of cortical minicolumns that I hope to expand into an integrated theory of consciousness and phenomenality. The most recent research can be found on my website: www.cognitivemechanics.net. I also intend to extend the research on beliefs that I have done with Dr. David Walsh. I have organized and implemented several studies with members of my research group, The Walsh Decision Research Laboratory. We have performed 5 studies and are currently designing three others related to the facets and dynamics of belief formulation. Our studies involve surveys that are designed to identify the causal factors that determine belief formulation and belief strength. Certainty strength generally serves as our dependent variable and other measures that we receive from respondents, which serve as predictor variables, include personal likeability, perceived relevance, expected permanence, substantiating evidence, perceived logic, importance to self-identity, and the influence of personal contacts, authority figures and the social community. In fact, we have been able to show, using multiple regression, that these factors explain a very large proportion of the variability in ‘certainty strength’ within our sample. The next study I will perform will take a closer, more manipulative, look at the specific roles of evidence, authority and self-identity as these proved to be the most significant variables. A related study that I am now submitting for publication sought to determine whether people's self-reported beliefs predicted weight management behaviors, and whether these behaviors in turn predicted BMI. These expected results were strongly supported by data gathered from 996 participants, who responded to a questionnaire, reporting their height, weight, beliefs about various aspects of weight management, and personal weight- management behaviors, including exercise activities and eating habits. Overall, 40% of the variance in BMI within our sample could be predicted by a combination of health beliefs and their associated eating and exercise behaviors. I am currently writing a research plan to repeat this study with a larger sample and more varied predictors of BMI. I am open to teaching courses in any area of psychology, neuroscience or biology. I am fully credentialed to teach biology in California state classrooms (CBEST) and have extensive knowledge of cell biology, genetics and medicine. I would be well prepared to teach courses such as: behavioral neuroscience, clinical management of psychopathology, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive processing, developmental psychology, evolutionary psychology, functional neuroanatomy, learning and memory, and psychophysiology. I am an honest and humble person, I enjoy teaching and learning and I do my best to present course material with clear thinking and palpable enthusiasm. Undergrad Autobiographical Description Enthusiastic curiosity and the joy of learning have been predominant aspects of my personality since my youth. My interest in science and academia dates back to elementary school when I first became enthralled with learning how and why things work the way they do. Even then, I would search libraries and book stores for information that could teach me more about what I wanted to know. Because of my early enthusiasm, my youth became a period marked by the pairing of neurological reward with learning and critical analysis. This conditioning process led me towards the internalization of classical and abstruse concepts and towards the conviction that I wanted to make my personal contribution to society as a research scientist. Since this time, I have focused on two main goals: developing myself within the academic, professional sphere and synthesizing learned information into an informed world view. Once enrolled at USC, I realized that pursuing a major in psychology would be a natural way to focus my interests. Perhaps the aspect that I found most intriguing about psychology was its broad scope and wide array of applications. I quickly became involved in extracurricular activities associated with the psychology department. I was a member and active contributor to Psi Chi, the national honor society for psychology, and I was also the funding coordinator for the Forensic Psychology Club. I now hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from USC along with two minor degrees, one in neuroscience and the other in business. Beginning in my sophomore year, I secured a position in the social psychology department as a research assistant. Working in the lab was a rewarding experience for me because I was determined, from the beginning, to contribute as much as I could to the efforts of the principle experimenters. My determination influenced me to work on lab projects at home and during weekends. As in other jobs that I have had in the past, my supervisors noticed my devotion and I was quickly promoted. Within the next few months, I was no longer expected to be responsible for tasks like running subjects and entering experimental data into computers. Instead, I was responsible for collecting research articles from the book and journalstacks, scouring the articles for relevant information and data, presenting this information to the department and assisting in the development of research manuscripts. I assisted with projects where we tested for subtle linguistic evidence of heuristic biases, delved into unexplored facets of the fundamental attribution error, and attempted to determine the effects of cognitive load on information processing. The lessons that I learned in the lab were invaluable and they probably contributed to the strong “A”s I earned in both “Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences” and “Research Methods.” In my junior year, I founded the Natural Science Interest Club, and I remained president of the club for two years. Members met weekly to discuss and debate subjects ranging from popular scientific phenomena to more abstruse, theoretical concepts. Soon I began writing short essays which I dispersed during club meetings. Within a few months of forming the club, I perfected my skills with both Sitebuilder and Dreamweaver enabling me to create my website, www.organizationforlearning.com. I used this site to post the essays that I wrote online where they would be accessible to club members and other interested parties. My site now contains over one hundred essays about science, technology and philosophy. The club recently disbanded, but I still post new essays and other informative content from week to week and I plan to continue to use the site to informally publish my thoughts and ideas. I want to encourage you to visit the site as the pages are a good indicator of my proficiency with web design applications, and the essays should help attest to my writing ability. In my senior year, I completed an honors, faculty-directed, research project which, I believe, prepared me for the rigors of graduate school. I performed a study that analyzed the neurological correlates of approach and withdrawal using electroencephalography. By the end of the semester, I became adept at conducting electroencephalographic (EEG) experimentation and at interpreting and analyzing the resultant data. I was allowed to present my concluding research paper to the faculty and was rewarded by the neuroscience department with an “A.” I also have extensive commercial (non-academic) work experience which has helped me to refine my professional demeanor and to hone practical skills and qualities. These jobs have helped me to develop competency and confidence with letter drafting, proofreading and professional correspondence. Please see my resume for contact information and more detail. |
Jared Reser's
Personal Statement
Personal Statement
