News

September 2024: We are pleased to have recevied a research grant from the NSF RITEL program in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh and Northeastern University! The award will fund 2 years of work towards using AI-powered emerging technology to provide STEM learning support for deaf students.

July 2024: Dr. Meghan McGarry has recevied n NIH NRSA F32 postdoctoral fellowship to come work at ABL for three years, starting January 2025. Congrats to Meghan!

June 2024: ABL student Melody Schwenk has received an NIH NRSA F31 predoctoral fellowship! Congrats, Melody!

October 2023: Our Ph.D. in Educational Neuroscience program is recruiting prospective students! Click here for more info. 

October 2023: Our ABL team has a busy season of conferences. From September to November, our team is presenting at Society for the Study of Human Development, the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Society for Neurobiology of Language, Society for Neuroscience, Psychonomics Society, the Digital Media and Developing Minds congress, and the CIRCLS '23 convening. Whew!

April 2023: We hosted a retreat for our SAIL 2 project, with 14 students, staff, and consultants gathered for one and a half days of intensive work, experimentation, and team-building. 

October 2022: We are recruiting new students to apply for our fully-funded Ph.D. in Educational Neuroscience program! Admitted students could work with our team in the Action & Brain Lab, or in another of the VL2 Center labs. Click here for more information!

July 2022: We have a new paper published, in PLOS ONE, entitled Perceiving fingerspelling via point-light displays: The stimulus and the perceiver both matter. Congratulations to student authors Carly Leannah and Athena Willis!

July 2022: Our lab will be represented at the TISLR 14 conference happening in Osaka, Japan, this Fall! We have one poster about attitudes toward signing avatars, and one presentation about fingerspelling perception.

July 2021: We are thrilled to announce the award of a NSF RETTL award for $850,000 over 3 years! The award is entitled New Dimensions of ASL Learning: Implementing and Testing Signing Avatars & Immersive Learning (SAIL 2) (PI, Dr. Lorna Quandt, Co-PI Melissa Malzkuhn). 

November 2020: Our lab recently presented work at the Society for Neurobiology of Language and ASSETS '20: The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. Thanks to all lab members for the hard work that went into these papers and demonstrations.

September 2020:  The Action & Brain Lab welcomes two new graduate students this year, Ashley Xu and Carly Leannah! Welcome, Ashley and Carly--we are happy to have you and look forward to your time in the Action & Brain Lab!

June 2020: We are thrilled to announce the award of a NSF INCLUDES Planning grant! The award is entitled Cultivating Research & Equity in Sign-Related Technology (CREST; PI, Dr. Lorna Quandt, Co-PI Melissa Malzkuhn). This will be a major collaboration between the Action & Brain Lab and the Motion Light Lab.

October 2019:  Our lab has submitted two projects to the 2020 meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. We're excited to share our work on The relationship between sign language fluency and mental rotation: An EEG study  and Superior discrimination of complex biological motions in native ASL signers in Spring 2020!

September 2019: Our newest journal article is available as a final PDF here. 

September 2019: We are actively recruiting for new graduate students. Join our team! Please see this link or email Dr. Quandt for more information. 

August 2019: Our second journal article has been accepted for publication by Cortex. The paper is entitled: Sensorimotor system engagement during ASL sign perception: an EEG study in deaf signers and hearing non-signers, by Emily Kubicek and Lorna Quandt.

June 2019: We have had a poster accepted to the 2019 meeting of the Society for Neurobiology of Language in Helsinki, Finland. 

May 2019: A video about our SAIL project is part of the NSF's STEM for All Video Showcase! Check it out, vote for us, and share with your friends. We are thrilled to have the chance to share our work with the broader public.

April 2019: We are collecting responses to a brief survey, in which you identify and rate images. If you have 5 minutes, please take it here!

February 2019: Our newest paper is available as a pre-print. The paper is entitled, "Sensorimotor system engagement during ASL sign perception: an EEG study in deaf signers and hearing non-signers" and is currently undergoing peer review. In the meantime you can check it out here. The paper is authored by Emily Kubicek and Lorna Quandt.

January 2019: New data from Action & Brain Lab will be presented in Data Blitz talk and two poster sessions at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting in March 2019. The projects are entitled, Neural correlates of biological motion perception in sign language users and Sign language experience increases motor resonance during imitation of signs. 

December 2018: For a user-friendly explanation of our recent work you can check out our Kudos profile here. 

October 2018: Our first journal article has been accepted for publication by Brain and Language. The paper is entitled: Sensorimotor characteristics of sign translations modulate EEG when deaf signers read English, by Lorna Quandt and Emily Kubicek.

September 2018: We are thrilled to announce the award of a NSF EAGER award! The award is entitled Signing Avatars & Immersive Learning (SAIL): Development and Testing of a Novel Embodied Learning Environment (PI, Dr. Lorna Quandt, Co-PI Melissa Malzkuhn). This will be a major collaboration between the Action & Brain Lab and the Motion Light Lab.

July 2018: Our first journal article pre-print is now available here on bioarxiv! This manuscript is currently undergoing peer review. Please feel free to contact us with comments or questions. The paper is entitled: Sensorimotor characteristics of sign translations modulate EEG when deaf signers read English, by Lorna Quandt and Emily Kubicek. 

January 2018: New data from Action & Brain Lab will be presented in Data Blitz talk and a poster session at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting in March 2018. The project is entitled, Deaf signers’ sensorimotor system activity during perception of one- and two-handed signs.

December 2017: The PhD in Educational Neuroscience program is recruiting new PhD students for Fall 2018. Take a look at the announcement here: www.tinyurl.com/PEN2018

November 2017: Dr. Lorna Quandt presented the lab's first EEG results at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in a Nanosymposium session.

October 2017: Data collection for the first lab project is complete! Over 50 EEG participants were run through our experimental protocol. Thank you to each and every volunteer!

August 2017: Our second PhD student, Kirsten Daley, is starting work in the lab. Welcome, Kirsten!

June 2017: The first new data from Action & Brain Lab will be presented in a symposium session at the Society for Neuroscience 2017 in Washington, DC this fall. The talk is entitled, Motor system contributions to cross-linguistic translation when deaf signers read English. 

February 2017: We completed motion capture recording to create a new stimulus set, in collaboration with the Motion Light Lab. 

April 2016: The Action & Brain Lab construction is complete and the lab is open!