APF honors promising neuropsychology graduate students

The American Psychological Foundation (APF) announces the recipients of its 2004 Henry Hécaen Scholarship and Manfred Meier Scholarship. The two $2,500 awards recognize excellence in graduate neuropsychology studies. Meet the winners:

• Henry Hécaen Scholarship recipient Paul Seignourel, PhD, a fourth-year clinical psychology graduate student at the University of Florida, had a strong interest in clinical neuropsychology since he was an undergraduate. He earned his doctorate in theoretical probability from the University of Paris VI in 1999. He then moved to the United States two years later and became a graduate student in the neuropsychology, neurorehabilitation and clinical neuroscience track in the clinical and health psychology doctoral program at the University of Florida.

Seignourel studies the influence of executive functioning on information-processing biases in depression, particularly on selective memory for negative material and emotional regulation. His focus concerns the injured brain's emotional regulation capabilities and its selective memory for negative material.

• Manfred Meier Scholarship recipient Christopher Gavrilles Allen, a fourth-year clinical doctoral psychology student at the University of Massachusetts Boston, trained in psychotherapy at the university's counseling center and at the Cambridge Hospital's outpatient psychiatry department. Allen is completing his doctoral dissertation on patch-delivered nicotine's potential neuropsychological benefits--such as improved attention and memory--for people with schizophrenia.

Arthur Benton, PhD, established both scholarships with the foundation to honor two esteemed colleagues in neuropsychology: the late Henry Hécaen, PhD, a French neurologist instrumental in founding and developing neuropsychology as a science, and Manfred Meier, PhD, of the University of Minnesota, who helped establish a neuropsychology laboratory in which he conducted neuropsychological research on patients with epilepsy, cerebrovascular disorders and Parkinson's disease.

APA's Div. 40 (Clinical Neuropsychology) recommends candidates for the two scholarships to APF's Board of Trustees, which selects the recipients. For information on the 2005 Henry Hécaen and Manfred Meier Scholarships, visit http://www.apa.org/apf.

--M. GREER