Instructor, Department of Psychiatry
Motivated Learning & Memory Laboratory
McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School
Office: deMarneffe Building, office 225
Phone: 617-855-2672
Email: amaksimovskiy@mclean.harvard.edu
Ph.D., Behavioral Neuroscience, Boston University, 2017
B.A., Psychology, Cornell University, 2007
Research Interests
Dr. Maksimovskiy seeks to elucidate connections between mood, emotions, and memory disruptions in psychiatric disorders such as depression. While we learned a great deal about this field over the past decade (e.g., Pizzagalli, 2014), the relationship between emotion and memory remains understudied and restorative interventions are consequently underdeveloped.
Dr. Maksimovskiy is advancing this field by combining technological advances (such as automated face and voice recognition, pupil tracking, and computational modeling) with non-invasive measures of brain function (such as electroencephalogram; EEG). His current project involves inducing laughter in human participants to find out whether it has restorative effects on brain function and cognition. Dr. Maksimovskiy is conducting his work in Dr. Dillon’s laboratory; his research was supported by the National Institutes of Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).