Troy Smith, Ph.D.

Dr. Smith’s passion for student success comes from his background as a proud veteran of the U.S. Navy, a first-generation college student, and a non-traditional student. He enjoys and values research but is a teacher at heart. He deeply believes that the primary mission of institutions of higher education like UNG is to teach and train the leaders, citizens, and scholars of tomorrow and that his calling in life is to be part of that mission. Driven by this belief, he tries to bring enthusiasm, a dedication to excellence, and a student focus to every class he teaches.

Dr. Smith specializes in cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and quantitative research methods. His current research program has a theoretical branch and an applied branch.  The theoretical branch explores the cognitive mechanisms and neural correlates of predictions in the brain, particularly as they relate to memory for events (episodic memory), memory for facts and meanings (semantic memory), and how these two memory systems work together.  The tools he uses in this branch of his research include behavioral experiments with human participants, electrophysiological recordings (scalp EEG), and computational modeling. The applied branch explores how memory theories can be applied in real-world settings, particularly in the domain of education and training.

Dr. Smith also mentors UNG students interested in cognition and neuroscience more broadly, guiding them through focused research experiences and directed research projects. Topics of past student projects include examining whether binaural beats can modify brain wave activity and enhance memory (Cameron & Smith, 2017), creating a standardized set of norms for semantic relationships associated with common colors (Young & Smith, 2018), investigating the impact of self-referential learning on metacognition (Wright & Smith, 2018), and using EEG to study the cognitive processes that enable the brain to discern between different interpretations of ambiguous sentences that use ditransitive verbs (Barfield & Smith, 2019). Dr. Smith has served as a mentor for several McNair Scholars, and his students have been awarded internal grants (a student FUSE grant, CURCA mini-grant, CURCA travel grants) and prestigious external awards including the Goldwater Scholarship [LINK TO https://ung.edu/news/articles/2019/05/ung-has-first-goldwater-scholar-and-two-students-earn-boren-scholarships.php] and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

• Research Methods
• Biopsychology
• Biopsychology Lab
• Conditioning and Learning
• Principles of Neuroscience
• Advanced Neuroscience

• Postdoctoral training, Cognitive Neuroscience, The Ohio State University, 2010-2014
• Ph.D., Psychology, University of Oklahoma, 2010
• M.S., Experimental Psychology, University of Texas at Arlington, 2007
• Honors B.S., Interdisciplinary Studies, Cum Laude, University of Texas at Arlington, 2001

• Measuring prediction error in the brain (using EEG)
• Computational models of memory
• Metacognition and ways to improve learning/memory
• False memories

Troy Smith’s CV