Aron Keith Barbey (born January 6, 1977) is an American cognitive neuroscientist, whose research investigates the neural architecture of human intelligence. His research group examines the beneficial effects of cognitive neuroscience, physical fitness, and nutritional interventions on brain health and intelligence across the lifespan. Barbey is Associate Professor in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Bioengineering at the University of Illinois, and Director of the Decision Neuroscience Laboratory at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science of Technology. Barbey's Decision Neuroscience Laboratory is supported by several large-scale private and federal research grants and contracts, including a contract for $12.7 million from the Director of National Intelligence's research agency, IARPA. Barbey currently leads the "Intelligence, Learning, and Plasticity (ILP)" Initiative at the Beckman Institute.
Aron Barbey received a Ph.D. in Psychology from Emory University in 2007. From 2007-2011 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Cognitive Neuroscience Section of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health.
Aron Barbey is Associate Editor of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, a Nature Publishing Group journal. Barbey is also on the Editorial Board of NeuroImage, Intelligence, and Thinking & Reasoning,.
Barbey’s research investigates the effects of human brain damage on intellectual and social functions, with particular emphasis on the prefrontal cortex. Studies of patients with frontal lobe damage have a long history in the neuroscience of intelligence and provide a direct way to test whether regions within the prefrontal cortex are necessary for specific intellectual abilities. However, it was only recently that the limited applicability and specificity of small sample studies of focal brain damage were overcome by contemporary lesion mapping approaches. In a series of landmark studies, Barbey's research group investigated almost 200 patients with focal brain injuries and mapped the architecture of executive, social, and emotional brain systems. His research has helped to identify and characterize the neural systems underlying general intelligence, emotional intelligence, social intelligence, fluid intelligence, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and discourse comprehension. Barbey's research has also revealed molecular genetic markers that predict general intelligence following traumatic brain injury.
A central goal of Barbey's research is to establish and validate cognitive neuroscience-directed interventions to enhance human intelligence. In this effort, Barbey's research group has evaluated the efficacy of a 16-week cognitive neuroscience, physical fitness, and nutritional intervention in the IARPA-sponsored INSIGHT project. In addition, Barbey's research group is developing and testing nutraceuticals to enhance the performance of United States Air Force Battlefield Airmen in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory and Abbott Nutrition. Barbey is known for helping to establish the field of Nutritional Cognitive Neuroscience.
Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Solomon, Jeffrey; Krueger, Frank; Forbes, Chad; Grafman, Jordan. "An integrative architecture for general intelligence and executive function revealed by lesion mapping". Brain. 135 (4): 1154–1164. doi:10.1093/brain/aws021.
Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Grafman, Jordan. "Dorsolateral prefrontal contributions to human intelligence". Neuropsychologia. 51 (7): 1361–1369. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.05.017.
Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Paul, Erick; Forbes, Chad; Krueger, Frank; Goldman, David; Grafman, Jordan. "Preservation of General Intelligence following Traumatic Brain Injury: Contributions of the Met66 Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor". PLoS ONE. 9 (2): e88733. PMC 3935849 . PMID 24586380. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0088733.
Watson, Patrick; Paul, Erick; Cooke, Gillian; Ward, Nathan; Monti, James; Horecka, Kevin; Allen, Courtney; Hillman, Charles; Cohen, Neal; Kramer, Arthur; Barbey, Aron K. "Underlying sources of cognitive-anatomical variation in multi-modal neuroimaging and cognitive testing". NeuroImage. 129: 439–449. PMC 4841452 . PMID 26808332. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.01.023.
Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Paul, Erick J.; Grafman, Jordan. "Architecture of fluid intelligence and working memory revealed by lesion mapping". Brain Structure and Function. 219 (2): 485–494. doi:10.1007/s00429-013-0512-z.
Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Grafman, Jordan. "Architecture of cognitive flexibility revealed by lesion mapping". NeuroImage. 82: 547–554. PMC 3790579 . PMID 23721727. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.05.087.
Barbey, Aron K.; Koenigs, Michael; Grafman, Jordan. "Orbitofrontal Contributions to Human Working Memory". Cerebral Cortex. 21 (4): 789–795. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhq153.
Barbey, Aron K.; Koenigs, Michael; Grafman, Jordan (May 2013). "Dorsolateral prefrontal contributions to human working memory". Cortex. 49 (5): 1195–1205. PMC 3495093 . PMID 22789779. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2012.05.022.
Koenigs, Michael; Barbey, Aron K.; Postle, Brad; Grafman, Jordan. "Superior Parietal Cortex Is Critical for the Manipulation of Information in Working Memory". Journal of Neuroscience. 29 (47): 14980–14986. PMC 2799248 . PMID 19940193. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3706-09.2009.
Paul, Erick J.; Larsen, Ryan J.; Nikolaidis, Aki; Ward, Nathan; Hillman, Charles H.; Cohen, Neal J.; Kramer, Arthur F.; Barbey, Aron K. "Dissociable brain biomarkers of fluid intelligence". NeuroImage. 137: 201–211. PMID 27184204. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.05.037.
Social and Emotional Intelligence
Barbey, A. K.; Colom, R.; Paul, E. J.; Chau, A.; Solomon, J.; Grafman, J. H. "Lesion mapping of social problem solving". Brain. 137: 2823–2833. PMC 4163035 . PMID 25070511. doi:10.1093/brain/awu207.
Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Grafman, Jordan (Mar 2014). "Distributed neural system for emotional intelligence revealed by lesion mapping". Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. 9 (3): 265–272. PMC 3980800 . PMID 23171618. doi:10.1093/scan/nss124.
Krueger, Frank; Barbey, Aron K.; McCabe, Kevin; Strenziok, Maren; Zamboni, Giovanna; Solomon, Jeffrey; Raymont, Vanessa; Grafman, Jordan. "The neural bases of key competencies of emotional intelligence". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106 (52): 22486–22491. doi:10.1073/pnas.0912568106.
Barbey, Aron K.; Krueger, Frank; Grafman, Jordan. "An evolutionarily adaptive neural architecture for social reasoning". Trends in Neurosciences. 32 (12): 603–610. PMC 2787908 . PMID 19782410. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2009.09.001.
Barbey, Aron K.; Colom, Roberto; Grafman, Jordan. "Neural mechanisms of discourse comprehension: a human lesion study". Brain. 137 (1): 277–287. PMC 3954106 . PMID 24293267. doi:10.1093/brain/awt312.
Patterson, Richard; Rothstein, Jared; Barbey, Aron K. "Reasoning, cognitive control, and moral intuition". Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience. 6. doi:10.3389/fnint.2012.00114.
Reasoning, Judgment, and Decision Making
Barbey, Aron K.; Patterson, Richard. "Architecture of explanatory inference in the human prefrontal cortex". Frontiers in Psychology. 2. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00162.
Barbey, Aron K.; Krueger, Frank; Grafman, Jordan. "Structured event complexes in the medial prefrontal cortex support counterfactual representations for future planning". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 364 (1521): 1291–1300. PMC 2666713 . PMID 19528010. doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0315.
Barbey, Aron K.; Sloman, Steven A. (Jun 2007). "Base-rate respect: From ecological rationality to dual processes". The Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 30 (3): 241–54; discussion 255–97. PMID 17963533. doi:10.1017/S0140525X07001653.
Khemlani, Sangeet; Barbey, Aron K.; Johnson-Laird, Philip (Oct 2014). "Causal reasoning with mental models". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 8. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00849.
Operskalski, Joachim; Barbey, Aron K. (April 2016). "Risk literacy in medical decision making". Science. 352: 413–414. doi:10.1126/science.aaf7966.
Patterson, Richard; Operskalski, Joachim; Barbey, Aron K. (Oct 2015). "Motivated explanation". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 9. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00559.
Sloman, Steven; Barbey, Aron K.; Hotaling, Jared M. "A Causal Model Theory of the Meaning of Cause, Enable, and Prevent". Cognitive Science. 33 (1): 21–50. doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2008.01002.x.
Ward, Nate; Paul, Erick J.; Watson, Patrick; Cooke, Gillian E.; Hillman, Charles H.; Cohen, Neal J.; Kramer, Arthur F.; Barbey, Aron K. (June 2017). "Enhanced Learning through Multimodal Training: Evidence from a Comprehensive Cognitive, Physical Fitness, and Neuroscience Intervention". Scientific Reports. 7: 5808. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-06237-5.
Wolff, Phillip; Barbey, Aron K.; Hausknecht, Matthew. "For want of a nail: How absences cause events". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 139 (2): 191–221. doi:10.1037/a0018129.
Wolff, Phillip; Barbey, Aron K. (Jan 2015). "Causal reasoning with forces". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 9. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00001.
Zamroziewicz, Marta K.; Barbey, Aron K. "Nutritional cognitive neuroscience: Innovations for healthy brain aging". Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. 10. doi:10.3389/fnins.2016.00240.
Zamroziewicz, Marta K.; Paul, Erick J.; Rubin, Racheal D.; Barbey, Aron K. "Anterior cingulate cortex mediates the relationship between O3PUFAs and executive functions in APOE e4 carriers". Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. 7. doi:10.3389/fnagi.2015.00087.
Zamroziewicz, Marta K.; Paul, Erick J.; Zwilling, Chris E.; Barbey, Aron K. "Predictors of memory in healthy aging: Polyunsaturated fatty acid balance and fornix white matter integrity". Aging and Disease. 9. doi:10.14336/AD.2017.0501.
Zamroziewicz, Marta K.; Paul, Erick J.; Zwilling, Chris E.; Barbey, Aron K. "Determinants of fluid intelligence in healthy aging: Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid status and frontoparietal cortex structure". Nutritional Neuroscience. doi:10.1080/1028415X.2017.1324357.
Zamroziewicz, Marta K.; Paul, Erick J.; Zwilling, Chris E.; Johnson, Elizabeth J.; Kuchan, Matthew J.; Cohen, Neal J.; Barbey, Aron K. "Parahippocampal Cortex Mediates the Relationship between Lutein and Crystallized Intelligence in Healthy, Older Adults". Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. 8. doi:10.3389/fnagi.2016.00297.
Zamroziewicz, Marta K.; Zwilling, Chris E.; Barbey, Aron K. "Inferior Prefrontal Cortex Mediates the Relationship between Phosphatidylcholine and Executive Functions in Healthy, Older Adults". Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. 8. doi:10.3389/fnagi.2016.00226.
Zamroziewicz, Marta K.; Talukdar, M. Tanveer; Zwilling, Chris E.; Barbey, Aron K. "Nutritional status, brain network organization, and general intelligence". NeuroImage. 161. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.08.043.
