The Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) Lab is located in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. Directed by Kevin Ochsner, the SCAN Lab studies the ways in which emotion, self control and social behavior play key roles in human behavior and experience. We use a combination of behavioral and functional imaging methods to understand these core aspects of what it means to be human. We ask how these core abilities contribute to the experience and behavior typical of everyday life across the human lifespan as well as how they make function differently for individuals with clinical disorders.
Our research takes place in three places. Behavioral studies take place in the lab, which is located on the Columbia University campus in the Morningside Heights Neighborhood of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Functional imaging studies currently take place in two locations. The primary location is the state-of-the-art magnetic resonance imaging facility within the Zuckerman Mind, Brain Behavior Institute. This institute is the cornerstone building of a Columbia campus expansion in the Manhattanville neighborhood approximately 5 blocks north of the main campus that is the home of the SCAN Lab. A second location for fMRI work is the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Center on Columbia University’s Medical Campus.