Last week, I attended a talk by John Gabrieli at Stanford's Symbolic Systems Forum.
John is the director of the Gabrieli Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory. He discussed some of his work using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to study the regulation of thoughts, emotions and memories in the human brain.
Cool stuff. Obviously, thought, emotion and memory are related to human experience, but I'm not yet sure how they fit together with experience and design.
I saw Ian Gotlib speak at Stanford last Saturday. He gave an excellent presentation about his work on depression.
During his talk, Ian mentioned a Dr. Brown who "literally wrote the book" on mood/memory congruence (and who was in the audience). I must be sure to get more information about this guy.
I also saw Brian Knutson speak at Stanford recently.
Brian is interested in the neural basis of emotion and runs the Symbiotic Project on Affective Neuroscience. (Psychologists use the word "affect" to describe mood states and personality traits characterized both by high arousal and either positive or negative valence.)
Brian is also interested in the convergence of disciplines brought about by his research. I'm going to see if I can speak with him about design.