I grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to study psychology and neuroscience. After graduating, I spent a few years working with Kevin Ochsner and Tor Wager at Columbia University in New York, where I studied the psychological and neural bases of emotion regulation and social cognition. Currently, I'm a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin working with Jennifer Beer, pursuing a PhD in psychology and neuroscience.

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Research

The focus of my work is on the psychological and neural bases of social cognition and emotion. In particular, I'm interested in the processes involved in understanding oneself and other people, the biases that arise in these perceptions, and the motivational and emotional influences on them. I examine these questions using a combination of behavioral and neuroimaging methods.

Publications

Beer, J.S., & Hughes, B.L. (in press). Neural systems of social comparison and the “Above-Average” Effect. NeuroImage.  [ pdf ]

Beer, J.S., & Hughes, B.L. (in press) Self-enhancement: A social neuroscience perspective. To appear in: The handbook of self-enhancement and self-protection. M. Alicke & C. Sedikides (Eds). New York, NY: Guilford Press.  [ pdf ]

McRae, K., Hughes, B., Chopra, S., Gabrieli, J.D.E., Gross, J.J., & Ochsner, K.N. (in press). The neural bases of distraction and reappraisal. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.  [ pdf ]

Ochsner, K.N., Ray, R.R., Hughes, B.L., McRae, K., Cooper, J.C., Weber, J., Gabrieli, J.D.E., & Gross, J.J. (2009). Bottom-up and Top-down processes in emotion generation: Common and distinct neural mechanisms. Psychological Science, 20(11): 1322-1331.  [ pdf ]

Wager, T.D., Van Ast, L., Hughes, B.L., Davidson, M.L. Lindquist, M.A., Ochsner, K.N. (2009). Brain mediators of cardiovascular responses to social threat: Prefrontal-subcortical pathways and relationship with anxiety. NeuroImage, 47(3): 836-851.  [ pdf ]

Ochsner, K.N., Hughes, B.L., Robertson, E., Cooper, J.C. & Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2009). Neural systems supporting the control of affective and cognitive conflicts. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(9): 1841-1854.  [ pdf ]

Wager, T.D., Davidson, M.L., Hughes, B.L., Lindquist, M., Ochsner, K.N. (2008). Prefrontal-subcortical pathways mediating successful emotion regulation. Neuron, 59: 1-14.  [ pdf ] Supplementary Materials  [ pdf ] Commentary  [ pdf ]

Manuscripts Under Review / In Preparation

Hughes, B.L., & Beer, J.S. (under review). Neural correlates of motivated social cognition: The role of orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex.

Hughes, B.L., & Beer, J.S. (in preparation). Positively-biased self-evaluation: Working hard or hardly working?

Upcoming Conference Presentations

Hughes, B.L., & Beer, J.S. (2010). Not so fast: Social accountability reduces evaluative bias by increasing rather than decreasing cognitive control. To be presented at Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Las Vegas, NV.

Beer, J.S., & Hughes, B.L. (2010). Reduced Cognitive Control Supports Positivity Biases in Social Evaluation. In J.S. Beer (Chair) "New Insights into Social Evaluation Biases: From Brain to Behavior" Symposium at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Las Vegas, NV.

Hughes, B.L., & Beer, J.S. (2009). Neural Systems Underlying the Influence of Positivity Motivation on Social Evaluations. Social and Affective Neuroscience; New York, NY.

Hughes, B.L., & Beer, J.S. (2009). The “Above-Average” effect: Reduced self-processing and executive function. Cognitive Neuroscience Society; San Francisco, CA.

Hughes, B.L., & Beer, J.S. (2009). Accuracy in self-evaluations: Working hard or hardly working? Society of Personality and Social Psychology; Tampa, FL.