Aron K. Barbey

Aron K. Barbey
Beckman Institute
Born	1977
Residence	Urbana, Illinois
Nationality	United States
Fields	Cognitive neuroscience Cognitive neuropsychology
Institutions	Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology
Alma mater	Emory University National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
Known for	Decision Neuroscience Lab[1] INSIGHT: A Comprehensive Brain Training System[2][3][4][5][6]

Aron Keith Barbey (born January 6, 1977) is an American cognitive neuroscientist, whose research investigates the neural architecture of human intelligence.^{[7][8][9][10]} His research group^[11] examines the beneficial effects of cognitive neuroscience, physical fitness, and nutritional interventions on brain health and intelligence across the lifespan.

Barbey is Associate Editor of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience,^[12] Director of the Decision Neuroscience Laboratory^[1] and professor of neuroscience at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science of Technology, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, and in the Departments of Internal Medicine, Neuroscience, Psychology, and Speech and Hearing Science at the University of Illinois.^[7][8][9] Barbey's Decision Neuroscience Laboratory ^[1] is supported by several large-scale private and federal research grants and contracts, including a contract for $13.1 million from the Director of National Intelligence's research agency, IARPA.^{[4][5][6][13]}

Education

Aron Barbey received a Ph.D. in Psychology from Emory University in 2007.^[7] From 2007-2011 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Cognitive Neuroscience Section of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health.^[7][8][9]

Professional Activities

Aron Barbey is Associate Editor of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience,^[12] a Nature Publishing Group journal.^[14] Barbey is also on the Editorial Board of Thinking & Reasoning,^[15] a Taylor & Francis Group journal.

Research

Cognitive Neuroscience of Human Intelligence

Barbey’s research investigates the effects of human brain damage on intellectual and social functions, with particular emphasis on the prefrontal cortex.^{[7][8][9][10]} Studies of patients with frontal lobe damage have a long history in the neuroscience of intelligence and provide a direct way to test whether regions within the prefrontal cortex are necessary for specific intellectual abilities. However, it was only recently that the limited applicability and specificity of small sample studies of focal brain damage were overcome by contemporary lesion mapping approaches.^[16][17] In a series of landmark studies,^[10] Barbey's research group investigated almost 200 patients with focal brain injuries and mapped the architecture of executive, social, and emotional brain systems. His research has helped to identify and characterize the neural systems underlying general intelligence,^[18][19][20] emotional intelligence,^[21][22][23] social intelligence,^[24][25] fluid intelligence,^[26] working memory,^[27] cognitive flexibility,^[28] and discourse comprehension.^[29][30] Barbey's research has also revealed molecular genetic markers that predict general intelligence following traumatic brain injury.^[31][32][33]

Cognitive Neuroscience Methods to Enhance Human Intelligence

A central goal of Barbey's research is to establish and validate cognitive neuroscience-directed interventions to enhance human intelligence. In this effort, Barbey's research group^[11] has evaluated the efficacy of a 16-week cognitive neuroscience, physical fitness, and nutritional intervention in the IARPA-sponsored INSIGHT project.^[4][5][6] In addition, Barbey's research group is developing and testing nutraceuticals to enhance the performance of United States Air Force Battlefield Airmen in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory and Abbott Nutrition.^[34]

Selected Publications

General Intelligence

• Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Solomon, Jeffrey; Krueger, Frank; Forbes, Chad; Grafman, Jordan. "An integrative architecture for general intelligence and executive function revealed by lesion mapping". Brain 135 (4): 1154–1164. doi:10.1093/brain/aws021. 
• Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Grafman, Jordan. "Dorsolateral prefrontal contributions to human intelligence". Neuropsychologia 51 (7): 1361–1369. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.05.017. 
• Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Paul, Erick; Forbes, Chad; Krueger, Frank; Goldman, David; Grafman, Jordan. "Preservation of General Intelligence following Traumatic Brain Injury: Contributions of the Met66 Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor". PLoS ONE 9 (2): e88733. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0088733. 

Fluid Intelligence

• Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Paul, Erick J.; Grafman, Jordan. "Architecture of fluid intelligence and working memory revealed by lesion mapping". Brain Structure and Function 219 (2): 485–494. doi:10.1007/s00429-013-0512-z. 
• Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Grafman, Jordan. "Architecture of cognitive flexibility revealed by lesion mapping". NeuroImage 82: 547–554. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.05.087. 
• Barbey, Aron K.; Koenigs, Michael; Grafman, Jordan. "Orbitofrontal Contributions to Human Working Memory". Cerebral Cortex 21 (4): 789–795. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhq153. 
• Barbey, Aron K.; Koenigs, Michael; Grafman, Jordan. "Dorsolateral prefrontal contributions to human working memory". Cortex 49 (5): 1195–1205. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2012.05.022. 
• Koenigs, Michael; Barbey, Aron K.; Postle, Brad; Grafman, Jordan. "Superior Parietal Cortex Is Critical for the Manipulation of Information in Working Memory". Journal of Neuroscience 29 (47): 14980–14986. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3706-09.2009. 

Social and Emotional Intelligence

• Barbey, A. K.; Colom, R.; Paul, E. J.; Chau, A.; Solomon, J.; Grafman, J. H. "Lesion mapping of social problem solving". Brain 137: 2823–2833. doi:10.1093/brain/awu207. 
• Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Grafman, Jordan (Mar 2014). "Distributed neural system for emotional intelligence revealed by lesion mapping". Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 9 (3): 265–272. doi:10.1093/scan/nss124. PMID 23171618. 
• Krueger, Frank; Barbey, Aron K.; McCabe, Kevin; Strenziok, Maren; Zamboni, Giovanna; Solomon, Jeffrey; Raymont, Vanessa; Grafman, Jordan. "The neural bases of key competencies of emotional intelligence". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (52): 22486–22491. doi:10.1073/pnas.0912568106. 
• Barbey, Aron K.; Krueger, Frank; Grafman, Jordan. "An evolutionarily adaptive neural architecture for social reasoning". Trends in Neurosciences 32 (12): 603–610. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2009.09.001. 
• Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Grafman, Jordan. "Neural mechanisms of discourse comprehension: a human lesion study". Brain 137 (1): 277–287. doi:10.1093/brain/awt312. 
• Patterson, Richard; Rothstein, Jared; Barbey, Aron K. "Reasoning, cognitive control, and moral intuition". Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience 6. doi:10.3389/fnint.2012.00114. 

Reasoning, Judgment, and Decision Making

• Barbey, Aron K.; Patterson, Richard. "Architecture of Explanatory Inference in the Human Prefrontal Cortex". Frontiers in Psychology 2. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00162. 
• Barbey, Aron K.; Krueger, Frank; Grafman, Jordan. "Structured event complexes in the medial prefrontal cortex support counterfactual representations for future planning". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 364 (1521): 1291–1300. doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0315. 
• Barbey, Aron K.; Sloman, Steven A. (Jun 2007). "Base-rate respect: From ecological rationality to dual processes". The Behavioral and brain sciences 30 (3): 241–54; discussion 255–97. doi:10.1017/S0140525X07001653. PMID 17963533. 
• Khemlani, Sangeet; Barbey, Aron K.; Johnson-Laird, Philip (Oct 2014). "Causal reasoning with mental models". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00849. 
• Sloman, Steven; Barbey, Aron K.; Hotaling, Jared M. "A Causal Model Theory of the Meaning of Cause, Enable, and Prevent". Cognitive Science 33 (1): 21–50. doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2008.01002.x. 
• Wolff, Phillip; Barbey, Aron K.; Hausknecht, Matthew. "For want of a nail: How absences cause events". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 139 (2): 191–221. doi:10.1037/a0018129. 
• Wolff, Phillip; Barbey, Aron K. (Jan 2015). "Causal reasoning with forces". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00001. 

References

External links

• Decision Neuroscience Laboratory
• Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
• INSIGHT: A Comprehensive Brain Training System
• ResearchGate