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Assistant Professor
Office Location(s): 5417 North Quad Phone: 734.647.9539 ebfalk@umich.edu Communication Neuroscience Lab's Homepage
Emily Falk is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, and holds joint appointments in the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Institute for Social Research and in the Department of Psychology. Professor Falk's research focuses on the brain as a window to understand attitude and behavior change at the individual, group and population levels. She employs a variety of methods, with a focus on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). She has worked to develop a program of research in what she calls “Communication Neuroscience” to link neural activity (in response to persuasive messages) to behaviors at the individual, group and population levels. In particular, Professor Falk is interested in predicting behavior change following exposure to persuasive messages and in understanding what makes successful ideas spread (e.g. through social networks, through cultures). Falk is also interested in the development of “neural focus groups” to predict the efficacy of persuasive communication at the population level. At present, much of her research focuses on health communication, including recent work exploring neural predictors of increased sunscreen use, neural predictors of smoking reduction, and linking neural responses to health messages to population level behavioral outcomes; other areas of interest include political communication, cross-cultural communication, and the spread of culture, social norms and sticky ideas. Professor Falk’s work has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Prior to her doctoral work, Dr. Falk was a Fulbright Fellow in health policy, studying health communication in Canada. She received her bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from Brown University, and her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
