I majored in philosophy as an undergraduate in order to pursue my interest in bioethics. Working on my thesis (Harvard College ‘04) with Frances Kamm on the role of intention in moral judgment, I became intrigued by how people (philosophers, bioethicists, and the folk) make moral judgments in the first place. Is moral judgment accomplished by reason or intuition? To what extent does emotion play a role? How does theory of mind (the capacity to represent the mental states of others) fit into the picture?
In an attempt to address these kinds of questions, concerning the mechanisms underlying moral judgment, I went to graduate school in Cognitive Psychology at Harvard University (Fall 2004-Spring 2008). I am now a post-doctoral fellow at MIT in the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences.
My current research on the neural basis of human moral judgment employs methods of cognitive neuroscience: functional neuroimaging (fMRI) at MIT with Rebecca Saxe, studying patient populations with selective cognitive deficits (e.g. in theory of mind or emotional processing), and modulating activity in specific brain areas by applying magnetic pulses to the scalp (using transcranial magnetic stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center with Alvaro Pascual-Leone).