Rate My Professor Narun Pat

Dr. Narun Pat (Pornpattananangkul) is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Otago, New Zealand, having joined the department in 2019. He earned a BSc in Psychology from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, an MSc, and a PhD in Brain, Behavior, and Cognition from Northwestern University, USA, where he trained under clinical and social neuroscientists. Pat completed two postdoctoral fellowships: the first in neuroeconomics at the National University of Singapore and the second in biological psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health, USA, collaborating with psychiatrists and neuroimagers. He has received several academic awards and fellowships from agencies including Fulbright and the US National Institutes of Health.

As director of the Human Affective and Motivational Neuroscience (HAM Neuro) Lab, Pat investigates the brain bases of individual differences in cognition, emotion, and motivation, with a focus on decision-making, reward-processing, and cognitive, affective, and social neuroscience. He employs human cognitive neuroscience techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), along with polygenic scores, big data, machine learning, and computational modeling, to study implications for mental and neurodevelopmental health, including mood disorders and ADHD. His interdisciplinary research, supported by the Health Research Council of New Zealand, Oakley Mental Health Research Foundation, Otago Medical Research Foundation, and University of Otago, involves collaborations across fields locally and internationally. Pat's publications appear in leading journals, with nearly 2,000 citations on Google Scholar. Key works include Tetereva, A., Li, J., Deng, J. D., Stringaris, A., & Pat, N. (2022). Capturing brain-cognition relationship: Integrating task-based fMRI across tasks markedly boosts prediction and test-retest reliability (NeuroImage); Pat, N., Wang, Y., Anney, R., Riglin, L., Thapar, A., & Stringaris, A. (2022). Longitudinally stable, brain-based predictive models mediate the relationships between childhood cognition and socio-demographic, psychological and genetic factors (Human Brain Mapping); Pat, N., Wang, Y., Bartonicek, A., Candia, J., & Stringaris, A. (2023). Explainable machine learning approach to predict and explain the relationship between task-based fMRI and individual differences in cognition (Cerebral Cortex); Pat, N., Riglin, L., Anney, R., Wang, Y., Barch, D. M., Thapar, A., & Stringaris, A. (2022). Motivation and cognitive abilities as mediators between polygenic scores and psychopathology in children (Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry); and Huang, Y., Pat, N., Kok, B. C., Chai, J., Feng, L., & Yu, R. (2023). Getting over past mistakes: Prospective and retrospective regret in older adults (Journals of Gerontology Series B).