Jessica Bartley

Florida International University | FIU · Department of Physics

Neuroscientists have sought to identify the underlying neural systems supporting social processing that allow interaction and communication, forming social relationships, and navigating the social world. Through the use of NIMH’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework, we evaluated consensus among studies that examined brain activity during soci...

Attentional control theory (ACT) posits that elevated anxiety increases the probability of re-allocating cognitive resources needed to complete a task to processing anxiety-related stimuli. This process impairs processing efficiency and can lead to reduced performance effectiveness. Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students frequen...

Background Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating disorder defined by the onset of intrusive, avoidant, negative cognitive or affective, and/or hyperarousal symptoms after witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. Previous voxel-based morphometry studies have provided insight into structural brain alterations associated with PT...

Background Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating disorder defined by the onset of intrusive, avoidant, negative cognitive or affective, and/or hyperarousal symptoms after witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. Previous voxel-based morphometry studies have provided insight into structural brain alterations associated with PT...

Objective Neuroscientists have sought to identify the underlying neural systems supporting mental processes involved in social cognition. These processes allow us to interact and communicate with others, form social relationships, and navigate the social world. Through the use of NIMH’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework, we evaluated consen...

Academic performance relies, in part, on intelligence; however, intelligence quotient (IQ) is limited in predicting academic success. Furthermore, while the search for the biological seat of intelligence predates neuroscience itself, its findings remain conflicting. Here, we assess the interplay between IQ, academic performance, and brain connectiv...

Anxiety is known to dysregulate the salience, default mode, and central executive networks of the human brain, yet this phenomenon has not been fully explored across the STEM learning experience, where anxiety can impact negatively academic performance. Here, we evaluated anxiety and large-scale brain connectivity in 101 undergraduate physics stude...

Understanding how students learn is crucial for helping them succeed. We examined brain function in 107 undergraduate students during a task known to be challenging for many students—physics problem solving—to characterize the underlying neural mechanisms and determine how these support comprehension and proficiency. Further, we applied module anal...

Physics is a challenging academic pursuit in which university students regularly struggle to achieve success. Female students tend to perform negatively on introductory physics conceptual assessments compared to their male peers; however, active-learning classroom curricula are known to broadly improve performance on these tests. Here, we used fMRI...

Understanding how students learn is crucial for helping them succeed. We examined brain function in 107 undergraduate students during a task known to be challenging for many students - physics problem solving - to characterize underlying neural mechanisms and determine how these support comprehension and proficiency. Further, we applied module anal...

Anxiety is known to dysregulate the salience, default mode, and central executive networks of the human brain, yet this phenomenon has not been fully explored across the STEM learning experience, where anxiety can impact negatively academic performance. Here, we evaluated anxiety and large-scale brain connectivity in 101 undergraduate physics stude...

Modeling Instruction (MI) for University Physics is a curricular and pedagogical approach to active learning in introductory physics. A basic tenet of science is that it is a model-driven endeavor that involves building models, then validating, deploying, and ultimately revising them in an iterative fashion. MI was developed to provide students a f...

MACM connectivity patterns indicated robust co-activation of the dPCC/RSC seed across multiple commonly observed large-scale brain networks). First, co-activation was observed in regions of the DMN, including medial frontal gyrus, bilateral middle frontal gyri, and bilateral middle temporal gyri. Second, co-activation with the seed was also observe...

We present results from the University of Colorado's Partnership for Informal Science Education in the Community (PISEC) in which university participants work in afterschool programs on inquiry-based activities with primary school children from populations typically under represented in science. This university-community partnership is designed to...

Mass loss from evolved cool stars is an important ingredient for both galactic chemical and stellar evolution, yet the mechanisms which drive mass loss remain a mystery. Most of the energy and momentum is deposited into the wind close to the star where the acceleration takes place. We propose to obtain Long- and Short High R~600, 10-37 micron spect...

Theoretical models predict a range of values for the maximum principal quantum number (nmax) that can exist for hydrogen-like atoms surrounded by ions, atoms and electrons. We compare the values of nmax derived from different models for conditions in the weakly ionized plasma of the extended atmosphere of the red supergiant Betelgeuse (alpha Ori: H...

Cm-radio observations of evolved K and M stars made at the VLA and ATCA, and subsequent detailed atmospheric modeling, have revealed that the thermal emission originates from the wind acceleration region close to the star. The temperature and density gradients can only be coarsely described for the handful of stars with existing two or three wavele...