Kevin Ochsner
Professor of Psychology, Chair

My Contact Info

402B Schermerhorn Hall (Office)
321-324 Schermerhorn Hall (Lab)

Lab Site

SCAN Lab

Office Hours

By?e-mail appointment



212 851 9348
[email protected]

Kevin Ochsner

Research Interests

Social Cognitive Neuroscience
Social Cognition
Emotion
Self-regulation
Cognitive Neuroscience


Ph.D., Harvard University, 1998

General Area of Research

Social cognitive neuroscience approaches to emotion and its regulation, self control, & person perception.

Current Research

The social cognitive neuroscience lab asks questions about topics traditionally of interest to social psychologists (such as emotion regulation, self knowledge, and person perception) using techniques traditionally employed by cognitive neuroscientists (such as fMRI). Our approach integrates the theories and methods of each discipline to understand the psychological and neural bases of social, self-reflective, and emotional behavior.
One line of research uses fMRI to ask what mechanisms underlie our ability to change the way we feel by changing the way we think about the meaning of our experiences. In multiple studies we have found that this ability, known as reappraisal, depends upon interactions between prefrontal control systems that implement reappraisal stratgies and emotional appraisal systems, such as the amygdala, that generate affective responses. Current work examines the specific nature of these interactions as we think about emotional events in different ways.
A second line of research uses fMRI to examine the mechanisms we use to understand either our own or other people's emotions, attributes, and intentions. We have recently found that these two abilities depend upon both common and distinct processes used to analyze the meaning of first-person experience and third person observations.
(For more complete description of these and other research projects please visit the Lab Site.)

Relevant Publications

Ochsner, K. N., & Gross, J. J. (2005). The cognitive control of emotion.?Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(5), 242-249.
Ochsner, K. N., Knierim, K., Ludlow, D., Hanelin, J., Ramachandran, T., & Mackey, S. (2004). Reflecting upon feelings: An fMRI study of neural systems supporting the attribution of emotion to self and other.?Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16(10), 1746-1772.
Ochsner, K. N., Ray, R. D., Robertson, E.R., Cooper, J. C., Chopra, S., Gabrieli, J.D.E., and Gross, J.J. (2004). For beter or for worse: Neural Systems Supporting the Cognitive Down- and Up-regulation of Negative Emotion.?Neuroimage, 23 (2), 483-499.
Ochsner, K. N. (2004). Current Directions in Social Cognitive Neuroscience.?Current Opinion Neurobiology,?14, 254-258.

Courses Taught

Fall 2016

Experimental Psychology: Social Cognition and Emotion

4 pts, UN1450


Fall 2016

Experimental Psychology: Social Cognition and Emotion (Lab)

0 pts, UN1451


Fall 2016

Supervised Individual Research

0 pts, UN3950

Selected Publications

The cognitive control of emotion.

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Reflecting upon feelings: An fMRI study of neural systems supporting the attribution of emotion to self and other.

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For better or for worse: Neural Systems Supporting the Cognitive Down- and Up-regulation of Negative Emotion.

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Current Directions in Social Cognitive Neuroscience.

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