People
The Shared Minds Lab is currently growing. Reach out if you're interested in joining the team.
Samuel A. Nastase
Sam is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Neuroscience Program at USC, as well as director of the Shared Minds Lab. His research focuses on understanding what is shared across individual brains and how we use language to share our thoughts with one another. His expertise combines naturalistic neuroscience (e.g., fMRI, iEEG) and deep learning (e.g., large language models) to better understand how the brain supports communication in real-world contexts. Sam completed his PhD with Jim Haxby at Dartmouth and worked with Uri Hasson and Ken Norman as a postdoc at Princeton.
Sajjad Torabian
How do we build representations of others? How do we think about their goals, intentions, and beliefs, and communicate what we build in our minds? In my PhD at UC Irvine, I tackled these questions by designing controlled visual fMRI experiments. Specifically, I studied how the brain categorizes representations of physical versus social events, and how it transitions between the two through degrees of intentions. During my postdoc at USC, using naturalistic experiments and deep learning models, I now investigate how the brain transforms visual stimuli into structured context during social interaction, bridging perception, language, and social cognition.
April Luo
April’s research focuses on computational psychiatry and the use of large language models to analyze brain signals during naturalistic conversation. She is also interested in brain–computer interfaces, particularly speech BCIs. Outside of the lab, she enjoys snowboarding.
Landi Jiang
Landi is a senior at USC studying cognitive science. She is interested in conversation and linguistic meaning. Outside of school, she enjoys drawing cartoons, people-watching, and cooking soup.
Past mentees
Zaid Zada (now a postdoc in Alex Huth's lab at UC Berkeley)
Ahmad Samara (now a PhD student in Tammy Vanderwal's lab at University of British Columbia)
Isaac Christian (now PhD student in Michael Graziano's lab at Princeton University)
Yingying Peng (now a PhD student at Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Chanyuan Gu (now an assistant professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Yibei Chen (now a postdoc in Satra Ghosh's lab at MIT)
Jane Han (now a PhD student in Jim Haxby's lab at Dartmouth College)
Heejung Jung (now a postdoc in Josef Parvizi's lab at Stanford University)
Collaborators
Prof. Uri Hasson, Princeton University
Prof. Kenneth A. Norman, Princeton University
Prof. James V. Haxby, Dartmouth College
Prof. M. Ida Gobbini, University of Bologna
Prof. Tamara Vanderwal, University of British Columbia
Prof. Ping Li, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology