Career Profile
I obtained my Bachelor's degrees (Bachelor of Management and Bachelor of Science) in 2012 and Master's degrees in Psychology in 2015 from Southwest University in China. I was awarded National First-class Graduate Scholarship and National Scholarship for Postgraduate during my graduate study. I obtained my Ph.D. degree from University College Dublin in 2019. My Ph.D. projects focused on the reward processing endophenotypes of alcohol misuse, in which computational modeling and neural modulation analysis were employed to interrogate tasked-related fMRI and EEG data.
Research Experiences
I am currently working as post-doctoral researcher in ENIGMA addiction working group, superived by Hugh Garavan and Scott Mackey. My interest is to identify neuroimaging and genetic biomarkers for substance dependence
My main research works during my Ph.D. were based on IMAGEN project. IMAGEN is a European research project examining how biological, psychological, and environmental factors during adolescence may influence brain development and mental health. I characterized the adolescent reward system with activation and connectivity maps during reward anticipation, receipt, omission and prediction error. I have gained a deep understanding of fMRI data processing (e.g., PPI analysis, model-based neuromodulation analysis) and much experience in dealing with a large sample of fMRI data. I also helped the team to pre-process EEG data, process behavioral log files from Presentation. I have participated in two data competitions that used 1) resting-state data to predict autism (https://paris-saclay-cds.github.io/autism_challenge/); 2) structural data to predict brain age (https://www.photon-ai.com/pac2019), in which I gained a lot of understanding of machine learning.
My main studies were using EEG. I have gained essential research experiences including experiment design, running EEG experiment, analyzing EEG data during this period. To make nice figures, I learned how to use Adobe illustrator and photoshop. I also attended several workshops on fMRI data which gave tutorials on fMRI data analysis. I had 2 first-author papers and was awarded National Scholarship for Postgraduate once and National First-class Graduate Scholarship for three times.
Whelan, R., Cao, Z., O’Halloran, L. & Pennie, B. (in press). Genetics, imaging and cognition: Big Data approaches to addiction research. In Cognition And Addiction: From Mechanisms to Interventions, Ed. Verdejo-Garcia, A. Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Zeng, J., Wang, Y., Zeng, J., Cao, Z., Chen, H., Liu, Y., ... & Su, L. (2019). Predicting the behavioural tendency of loss aversion. Scientific reports, 9(1), 5024.
O'Halloran, L., Rueda‐Delgado, L. M., Jollans, L., Cao, Z., Boyle, R., Vaughan, C., ... & Whelan, R. (2019). Inhibitory‐control event‐related potentials correlate with individual differences in alcohol use. Addiction biology.
Orr, C., Spechler, P., Cao, Z., Albaugh, M., Chaarani, B., Mackey, S., ... & Garavan, H. (2019). Grey Matter Volume Differences Associated with Extremely Low Levels of Cannabis Use in Adolescence. Journal of Neuroscience, 39(10), 1817-1827.
Cao, Z., Bennett, M., Orr, C., Icke, I., Banaschewski, T., Barker, G. J., ... & Whelan, R. (2019). Mapping adolescent reward anticipation, receipt, and prediction error during the monetary incentive delay task. Human brain mapping.
O'halloran, L., Cao,Z., Ruddy, K., Jollans, L., Albaugh, M. D., Aleni, A., ... & Whelan, R. (2018). Neural circuitry underlying sustained attention in healthy adolescents and in ADHD symptomatology. NeuroImage, 169, 395-406.
Padilla, M. M., O’Halloran, L., Bennett, M., Cao, Z., & Whelan, R. (2017). Impulsivity and reward processing endophenotypes in youth alcohol misuse. Current Addiction Reports, 4(4), 350-363.
Jollans, L., Cao, Z.., Icke, I., Greene, C., Kelly, C., Banaschewski, T., ... & Whelan, R. (2016). Ventral striatum connectivity during reward anticipation in adolescent smokers. Developmental neuropsychology, 41(1-2), 6-21.
Cao, Z., Li, Y., Hitchman, G., Qiu, J., & Zhang, Q. (2015). Neural correlates underlying insight problem solving: Evidence from EEG alpha oscillations. Experimental brain research, 233(9), 2497-2506.
Zeng, J., Cao, Z., Huang, J., Hitchman, G., & Zhang, Q. (2014). Predictability influences whether outcomes are processed in terms of original or relative values. Brain and cognition, 90, 1-7.