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Joey
Ka-Yee Essoe
Research Associate, Lab Manager
Address:
UCSF - Mission Bay
Neuroscience Research Building, Rm 502
MC 0444, 675 Nelson Rising Lane
San Francisco, CA 94158
Email: joey
[at] gazzaleylab.ucsf.edu
Telephone: (415) 502-7322
Curriculum
Vitae: [pdf]
Joey, a lover of Irish whiskey, kittens, and Deuteronomy, was born and
raised
in Hong Kong under English rule. After completing the infamous HKCEE,
she moved to
San Francisco as she longed to be in a society tolerant of quirky and
independent women.
She has been interested in science and cognition since childhood, and
had never
envisioned anything
but a life in research and academia. The fact that academia is the
natural home for
other quirky and independent people was a gratifying surprise.
In 2006, Joey
received her B.A. in Psychology
with an emphasis in Psychophysiology from San
Francisco State
University (SFSU). While
attending SFSU, Joey began serving as a research assistant for
Dr.
Mark
Geisler,
director of the Cognitive
Psychophysiology
Laboratory (CPL).
In the CPL, Joey was
part of many projects utilising electroencephalograph. Her favourite
project was
her honours thesis
research
investigating the effects of sleep
quality on learning and memory by comparing the eletrophysiological and
behavioural
differences between good and poor sleepers. This study brought some of
her
research
interests—sleep quality, learning, and
memory—together. While she was
working on her thesis, she was also contributing significantly to a
project which
sought evidence in support for reducing stimuli strength in olfactory
odd-ball
paradigm, thus shortening the inter-stimuli interval and experiment
duration, and
consequently reducing the plight of physical fatigue as a confound in
olfactory
research. In this project, Joey gained access and training on one of
the only two
research olfactometers in the United States at the time.
Prior to
sacrificing three years to the gods
of financial necessity, Joey was determined to leave Dr. Geisler with
an army of
competent research assistants. She and Erin
Ramage,
the graduate student whose master
thesis formed the aforementioned olfactory ERP project, devised an
internship programme
to achieve this goal. As assistant director, Joey designed and gave
lectures, trained
interns on ERP data collection, and advised them on their
presentations.
These experiences
affirmed her desires for a
life in academia as she found research, as well as mentoring and
interacting with
students in the context of research, most energising and fulfilling.
During her years
away, Joey was sustained by the memories of these gratifying
experiences, and the
yearning of returning to an environment of intellectual vigour, where
she can gain experience to
help attain graduate school admission. In 2010, she finished her
“real world
experiment” and thankfully returned to academia when she was
accepted into the
Gazzaley Lab.
Beginning in late 2010, Joey served as a research assistant to Michael
Rubens, aiding him in collecting simultaneous
EEG/fMRI data for a project investigating the variability of
the response time in older adults. In mid 2011, Joey took on the lab
manager position for the Gazzaley Lab in addition to her research
duties. Joey’s current project concerns the effects of
working memory maintenance on stimulus discrimination under various
levels of multi-tasking demands, as well as comparing said effects
between young and older adults.
Joey hopes to study the intricate relationships between
cognitive control (goal-directed attention, inhibition, task
coordination), learning, and memory, their neural underpinnings, how
these relationships and
processes changes across lifespan, and factors that might influence
them such as the quality of sleep and mood disorders. In light of such, she
hopes to
learn in her graduate studies – in addition to a solid
training to
disentangle these matters – how to be
a researcher who collaborates well, cultivates board interests while
maintaining focus and productivity.
Dream big*, right? Of course right!
Starting
in Fall 2012, Joey
will begin graduate studies in the Behavioural Neuroscience Programme of the
Psychology
Department at UCLA. There she be mentored
by Dr. Jesse Rissman [lab], who studies the relationship
between memory and attention utilising innovative fMRI analysis
techniques, in collaboration
with Dr. Alan Castel [lab],
who studies memory, attention, and cognitive changes across lifespan.
So yes, dreams do come true!
*Interesting(?)
fact: The shirt Joey was wearing in the photograph reads "Dream Bigger,
Live Harder, Love Deeper." Don't be jealous, but it is also
extraordinarily comfy.
Awards/Honours:
Golden Key International Honour Society (2004 – present).
Psi Chi International Honor Society in Psychology (2004 –
present).
SFSU Psychology Department Honours Thesis Program (2003 –
2004).
SFSU College of Behavioural and Social Sciences Dean’s List
(2001 – 2006).
Scholarship Award for Distinction in the Hong Kong Certificate of
Education Examination (HKCEE) in the Subject of Human Biology (1997).
Publications:
Rubens, M.T.,
Essoe, K.Y.,
Gazzaley, A (in prep). Synchronous electrophysiological and hemodynamic
measures
converge to illuminate the nature of individual response variability in
older
adults.
Ramage, E. M.,
Essoe, J. K.-Y., Geisler, M.
W. (in prep). Olfactory ERP’s in
Response to Below-, At-, and Supra-Threshold Concentrations.
Thesis:
Lau, J. K.-Y. (2004). Effects of Sleep
Quality on Long-term Memory: An
EEG Study. (Unpublished undergraduate honours thesis). Department of
Psychology, San
Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA.
Presentations:
Lau, J. K.-Y., Thomas, A. M., Geisler,
M. W. (2004, May). Effects of
sleep quality on long-term memory: an EEG study. PowerPoint
presentation presented at
Stanford Undergraduate Psychology Conference, Stanford, CA.
Lau, J. K.-Y., Thomas, A. M., Geisler,
M. W. (2004, May). Effects of
sleep quality on long-term memory: an EEG study. PowerPoint
presentation presented at
Psi Chi San Francisco State University Chapter’s First Annual
Student Psychology
Conference, San Francisco, CA.
Thomas, A. M.,
Lau, J. K.-Y., Geisler, M. W. (2004,
May). Effects of Headaches on
long-term memory. PowerPoint presentation presented at Psi Chi San
Francisco State
University Chapter’s First Annual Student Psychology
Conference, San Francisco,
CA.
Conference Abstracts:
Essoe, J. K.-Y., Ramage, E. M.,
Geisler, M. W. (2008, April). The
effects of sleep quality on visual event-related potentials in response
to increasing
emotional intensity of angry facial stimuli in healthy adults. Poster
presented at
Cognitive Neuroscience Society annual meeting, San Francisco, CA.
Ramage, E. M.,
Essoe, J. K.-Y., Geisler, M.
W. (2008, April). Event-related
potentials in response to emotional facial stimuli at threshold
perception. Poster
presented at Cognitive Neuroscience Society annual meeting, San
Francisco,
CA.
Ramage, E. M.,
Essoe, J. K.-Y., Geisler, M.
W. (2007, November). Event-related
potentials in response to increasing emotional intensity of angry
facial stimuli.
Poster presented at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting, San
Diego,
CA.
Ramage, E. M.,
Essoe, J. K.-Y., Parks, A., Lloyd, K.,
Hunt, K., Geisler, M. W.
(2006, April). Olfactory event-related potentials to near threshold
stimuli in healthy
adults. Poster presented at the Association for Chemoreception Sciences
annual meeting,
Sarasota, FL.
Essoe, J. K.-Y., Ramage, E. M., Parks,
A., Lloyd, K., Hunt, K., Geisler, M. W. (2006, April). The effects of
sleep quality on olfactory
event-related
potentials in healthy adults. Poster presented at the Association for
Chemoreception
Sciences annual meeting, Sarasota, FL.
Ramage, E. M.,
Essoe, J. K.-Y., Parks, A., Firoozabadi,
R., Lloyd, K., Hunt, K., Geisler, M. W. (2005, May). Physiological
processing of olfactory
sensitivity. Poster
presented at the Graduate Student Conference, San Francisco State
University,
CA.
Brubaker, A. S.,
Lau, J. K.-Y., San Miguel, M.,
Geisler, M. W. (2004, October). Frontal
midline theta activity as a quantitative indicator of anxiety relief
associated with
Animal-Assisted Therapy. Poster presented at the International
Association of
Human-Animal Interaction Organizations triennial conference, Glasgow,
Scotland.
Brubaker, A. S.,
Lau, J. K.-Y., Geisler., M. W. (2004,
September). Frontal midline theta
activity as an index of the efficacy of Animal-Assisted Therapy in
cases of math
anxiety. Poster presented at the International Organization of
Psychophysiology 12th
World Congress, Porto Carras, Greece.
Thomas, A. M.,
Lau, J. K.-Y., Geisler, M. W. (2004,
May). Effects of tension headaches
on long-term memory. Poster Presented at Stanford Undergraduate
Psychology Conference,
Stanford, CA.
Brubaker, A. S.,
Lau, J. K.-Y., Thomas, A. M., Geisler,
M. W. (2004, April).
Electroencephalographic measures of anxiety and depression: the effects
of positive
human-animal interaction during a cognitive stressor task. Poster
presented at the
Cognitive Neuroscience Society annual meeting, San Francisco, CA.
Brubaker, A. S.,
Lau, J. K.-Y., Schaeffer, J., Geisler,
M. W. (2003, August).
Psychophysiological effects of positive human-animal interaction.
Poster presented at
the International Society for Anthrozoology annual meeting, Canton, OH.
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