Amy McDonnell

Research Interests

I study neural correlates of human attention and how they change when you shift out of the laboratory and into real-world, applied contexts. In one line of research, I utilize scalp electroencephalography (EEG), intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG), electrocardiography (ECG), and virtual reality (VR) to study the psychophysiological effects of immersion in natural environments on attention, affect, and health. In another line of research, I utilize EEG, ECG, driving simulator technology, behavioral measures, and on-road, naturalistic methods to explore driver workload, arousal, and attention when multitasking behind the wheel and operating autonomous vehicles. My research has significant implications for areas such as public health, urban design, engineering psychology, transportation safety, and human-automation interactions. I am also broadly interested in reward processing in the brain, the intersection between attention, emotion, and stress, and the continued development of reliable brain- and body-based measurement techniques for studying human cognition outside of the laboratory to solve real-world problems.