Marla Dressel

I am a Ph.D. student in Psychology and Lifespan Cognitive Neuroscience at Georgetown University with a concentration in Cognitive Sciences. I hold a BSc and Honours BSc from the University of Groningen and a Research MSc in Psychology from the University of Amsterdam, where I specialized in Cognitive Neurosciences and Psychological Methods. My graduate training included research internships at the Social Brain Lab (Keysers & Gazzola) and the Amodio Lab. My research sits at the intersection of social neuroscience and computational psychiatry, examining empathy, the conditions under which it fails, and how those failures manifest in disorders of social cognition. My dissertation asks specifically how individuals with clinically and forensically significant psychopathy learn empathic, prosocial, and antisocial behaviors, and what these patterns tell us about the social learning mechanisms that give rise to such behaviors in the first place. To address this, I combine methods, including computational modeling, fMRI, and machine learning. I am also an advocate for open science and integrate transparent practices throughout my research.