Heatherton Lab

I am a fourth year graduate student working with Dr. Todd Heatherton. My research focuses on understanding the neural bases of social behavior and social interactions. I use both neuroimaging and behavioral techniques to characterize the rewarding value of social connections and the effects of social exclusion on cognition and behavior. Prior to coming to Dartmouth, I graduated from Bowdoin College in 2007 and then spent two years working as a Research Assistant at Harvard University in Randy Buckner’s Cognitive Neuroscience Lab.

contact:  katherine.e.powers@dartmouth.edu

PUBLICATIONS:

Chen, P.A., Wagner, D.D., Kelley, W.M., Powers, K.E., & Heatherton, T.F. (in press). Medial prefrontal cortex differentiates self from mother in Chinese: Evidence from self-motivated immigrants. Culture and Brain.

Powers, K.E. & Heatherton, T.F. (2012).  Characterizing socially avoidant and affiliative responses to social exclusion.  Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 6(46), 1-5. {PDF}

Powers, K.E., Wagner, D.D., Norris, C.J., & Heatherton, T.F. (2013). Socially excluded individuals fail to recruit medial prefrontal cortex for negative social scenes. Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8(2), 151-157. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsr079. {PDF}

Powers, K.E. & Powers, W.J. (in press). Physiologic brain imaging. In M.J. Aminoff & Daroff, R.B. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences, 2nd edition. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Powers, K.E., & Heatherton, T.F. (2013). Implicitly priming the social brain: Failure to find neural effects. PLoS ONE, 8(2), 1-5. {PDF}