Jacques S
- Research Program Mentor
PhD candidate at University of Southern California (USC)
Expertise
history of science, philosophy of science, neuropharmacology, neuroscience of interoception, cognitive science, computational neuroscience
Bio
I’m a PhD student in Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, where my research focuses on interoception and consciousness—how signals from the body shape awareness and a sense of self. I’m especially interested in bridging biology with computer science, and I enjoy exploring ideas at the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, and technology. Outside of the lab, I care deeply about community and public life. I spend time working on local projects in Los Angeles around housing, labor, and culture, and I love finding ways to connect people through events and storytelling. I also have a soft spot for plants, film, and coffee.Project ideas
Interoceptive Signals and Emotional Awareness
This project investigates how subtle bodily signals (like heart rate changes or skin conductance) influence our conscious awareness of emotional stimuli. The goal is to explore whether physiological changes can predict when an emotion “breaks through” into conscious awareness. This could culminate in a paper, essay, or presentation.
The Effect of Rapid Scrolling on Attention and the Brain
This project explores whether rapid scrolling through short-form videos (e.g., TikTok-style clips) impacts sustained attention. Students will review the current literature on this topic. And then students could create a literature review, an Op-Ed, or slides to present their research.
Unconscious, Subconscious, and Conscious: Clarifying the Differences
Conduct a literature review and design a small behavioral experiment to explore the distinctions between unconscious, subconscious, and conscious processing. The project will focus on how these terms are used in psychology and neuroscience, with an emphasis on emotional perception tasks (e.g., masked faces or subliminal stimuli). The student will create a clear framework for how these levels of processing differ, and test whether emotional cues presented below awareness still influence behavior.