Cognitive Aging, Learning, and Motivation Laboratory (CALM Lab)

Dr. Chen received her Ph.D. in Psychology from TU Dresden, Germany in 2022, and completed her postdoctoral research at Brandeis University, USA in 2026. She specializes in multimodal neuroimaging analysis and cognitive aging research. The CALM Lab she leads primarily investigates cognitive changes, learning mechanisms, and motivation in the aging brain, and was supported by the National Science and Technology Council’s “2030 Emerging Young Scholar Grant” in 2026. The lab integrates advanced technologies such as multimodal neuroimaging pipelines and eye-tracking to study how brain neural mechanisms (e.g., the Locus Coeruleus) regulate motivated learning and memory in young and older adults, and further explores brain activity indicators across the human lifespan.

The Connection Between Curiosity, Memory, and Brain. My research explores how curiosity changes with age, and its relationship with locus coeruleus structure and memory performance. We developed a novel assessment task and found that information-seeking in young adults is primarily driven by the affective valence of new information, whereas older adults place more value on novelty. This preference for novelty can be predicted by the structural integrity of the brain’s locus coeruleus. The study indicates that although the motives driving curiosity change with age, the positive benefits of curiosity on memory remain intact during aging, highlighting the crucial role of the locus coeruleus in information-seeking mechanisms.

Age Differences in Reward Decision-Making (Extrinsic Value). My past research combined pupillometry, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and computational modeling to investigate age differences in reward decision-making. The study found that compared to young adults, older adults are less sensitive to outcome probabilities, and their information accumulation process during decision-making is more susceptible to interference (exhibiting more noise). Notably, older adults with better structural integrity of the locus coeruleus exhibit higher sensitivity to value, indicating that locus coeruleus integrity can serve as an important indicator of cognitive resilience during the aging process.

The Interaction Between the Catecholaminergic System and Aging on Brain Functional Connectivity. My current research focuses on the interactive effects of the catecholaminergic system and aging on functional connectivity of brain networks. The findings demonstrate that locus coeruleus neuroimaging indicators and catecholamine synthesis capacity significantly affect neuropsychological performance, particularly evident in tests of executive function and memory.

For a complete list of publications, please see Google Scholar