I am a Research Coordinator and Lab Manager for the Gratton Lab. I grew up in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area of Texas. I earned my undergraduate degree in Cognitive Science from the University of California: Berkeley, where I first studied neuroscience. I am interested in how individual differences in brain networks affect performance at different tasks and how these brain networks change over time. In the future, I am hoping to explore the relationship between brain networks and circadian rhythms.
I was born in upstate New York and earned my undergraduate degree at SUNY Buffalo. I then went on to earn my MA in clinical psychology at Ball State University where I first was exposed to neuroscience research with EEG. I continued my work with EEG under Shinobu Kitayama at the University of Michigan until joining the Gratton Lab in 2018. My work is primarily focused on finding neural correlates of individual differences in behavior. To this end, I have used fMRI and EEG methodology to investigate neural correlates of creativity, culture, and psychopathology. Currently, my work is focused on how longitudinal (or “precision”) fMRI can inform the neural basis of psychopathology.
I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Gratton Lab, examining how functional brain network organization shifts across contexts and across the adult lifespan. I am particularly interested in the brain mechanisms supporting cognitive control and how they mature from childhood through older adulthood.
I received dual undergraduate degrees in Neuroscience and Human Development and Family Sciences from The University of Texas at Austin (2017), followed by a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2024). My graduate work with Jessica Cohen investigated large-scale brain network changes during late childhood and adolescence. In the Gratton Lab, I have extended this work to young adulthood and aging populations, building a lifespan perspective on how the brain's functional architecture develops and changes over time.
Dr. Caterina Gratton is a cognitive neuroscientist and Principal Investigator of the Gratton Lab in the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Gratton has undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Neuroscience from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley. She did her post-doctoral work in the Neurology Department at Washington University in St. Louis with Dr. Steve Petersen. Dr. Gratton was previously an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern and an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at Florida State University. She is now an Associate Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience at UIUC.