Dr. Nichols' Research Lab
Research Interests
Dr. Nichols' primary research interests involve topics related to neuroscience: including brain dynamics, traumatic brain injury, EEG studies, and computational neuroscience. He is also interested in vision perception and time perception.
What Dr. Nichols is looking for in a research assistant
Dr. Nichols is looking for students that are self-motivated, well organized, and willing to work hard. While he prefers that his Research Assistants have an interest in neuroscience, anyone is welcome to inquire. Dr. Nichols is willing to work with students at any level (i.e., Freshmen to Seniors); however, it is helpful if students have completed Research Methods and Quantitative Methods.
Current Research
Recently Dr. Nichols, with a team of student researchers, carried out a series of experiments examining event-related potentials in humans for emotional words versus pictures. They were interested in whether emotionally charged pictures would produce a significantly higher emotional response in participants than emotionally charged words.
The publication for the project can be seen at: http://impulse.appstate.edu/articles/2014/event-related-potentials-humans-emotional-words-versus-pictures
Past Research
Dr. Nichols has also conducted research in vision and perception, music genre preference, perceptual decoding of faces, object versus objectless motion, and motion perception in general.
Representative Publications of Research Interests
- Binocular Rivalry and Computational Neuroscience: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698908004872
- Motion Perception: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22391512
- Pattern Classification and Cognitive Neuroscience: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00028/abstract
- Student EEG Projects: http://impulse.appstate.edu/articles/2013/music-genre-preference-and-tempo-alter-alpha-and-beta-waves-human-non-musicians
Links
Dr. Nichols is the faculty advisor of IMPULSE, a student-run neuroscience peer review journal. (http://impulse.appstate.edu/ )
Dr. Nichols takes students to SYNAPSE each year, an undergraduate neuroscience conference. (http://synapse.cofc.edu/)
If you are interested in working with Dr. Nichols, please contact him at dnichols@roanoke.edu
Supplementary information pertaining to "Are electrode caps worth the investment? An evaluation of EEG methods in undergraduate neuroscience lab courses and research."
Supplementary information pertaining to "A series of computational neuroscience labs increases comfort with Matlab." in The Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education.