Department of Psychology

Postdoctoral Scholar:

Peter Bachman

I’m currently a postdoc here in the LCAP, working with Cindy Yee-Bradbury and with Keith Nuechterlein in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences. As a graduate student here at UCLA, I worked with Ty Cannon to analyze data collected as part of a twin study conducted by Ty and his collaborators at the National Public Health Institute of Finland. Specifically, we used EEG data recorded during the performance of a working memory task to test the hypothesis that schizophrenia patients would display reduced neural efficiency concomitant with their impaired behavioral performance.

In addition to evidence of this inefficiency among patients, we saw indication of an intermediate level of neural inefficiency among patients’ non-schizophrenic twins, suggesting that this abnormality may be associated with the inherited vulnerability for developing schizophrenia.
As part of the LCAP, I hope to help build more substantial bridges between the study of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia (particularly impairments of attention and memory) and the study of schizophrenia patients’ experience of stress and emotion. This line of investigation currently involves the use of experimental behavioral paradigms and analysis of EEG data including examination of ERP topography and latency, as well as EEG spectral power and phase relationships.
bachman@psych.ucla.edu

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