Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute (MRRI) is delighted to welcome a new postdoctoral fellow, Yingxue Tian, PhD, to their team of scientists. During the next three years, Dr. Tian will be working under the joint mentorship of Erica Middleton, PhD, in the Language and Learning Lab and Marja-Liisa Mailend, PhD, in the Speech and Language Recovery Lab.

Dr. Tian’s research investigates the cognitive and neural architecture of working memory, specifically the mechanisms dedicated to processing the serial order of verbal and visuospatial information units. To address this topic, she has relied on a wide variety of techniques, including the individual differences approach, the neuropsychological approach, and the network neuroscience approach.

Dr. Tian completed her undergraduate training in Statistics at Beijing Institute of Technology, and she earned her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from Rice University. In her dissertation, Dr. Tian investigated the intersection between working memory and spatial processing, identifying the behavioral and network-level neural underpinnings of the reorganization of working memory units in space. She has also investigated the generalization of inhibitory control from executive function to language processing after neuromodulatory (tDCS) training. Dr. Tian has received recognition for her early career research, including the Kenneth R. Laughery Award for Best Master’s Thesis in Psychology, the Pre-Dissertation Research Grant, and the Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the School of Social Sciences at Rice University.

At MRRI, Dr. Tian will investigate the connection between language, working memory, and long-term memory. Specifically, she will study the relationship between the cognitive-linguistic profiles of people with aphasia and different types of speech errors. She will also investigate the individual differences in response to treatment from different training approaches for word retrieval in aphasia.

Dr. Tian’s long-term research goals are to advance our knowledge of the interplay between language processing and memory and to employ this knowledge for designing effective treatments that can facilitate recovery of disrupted cognitive functions after stroke.

Welcome, Dr. Tian!