People#
Dr. Feilong Ma#
Principal Investigator
feilong@sc.edu | Google Scholar | 0000-0002-6838-3971
@feilong.bsky.social | @mafeilong | feilong
Feilong began his academic career at Beijing Normal University, working with Prof. Jia Liu, where he developed his interest in individual differences and brain–behavior relationships. He completed his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College under the supervision of Prof. James V. Haxby, focusing on individual differences in fine-grained brain functional architecture. He continued his research at Dartmouth as a Postdoctoral Fellow and later as a Research Assistant Professor. In 2025, Feilong joined the University of South Carolina, where he is expanding his research to the neural mechanisms of language abilities, aphasia, and other disorders.
Dr. Cheng Xiao#
Postdoctoral Fellow
cxiao@mailbox.sc.edu | Google Scholar 0000-0001-5057-9143
chengxiaocx
Dr. Cheng Xiao completed her PhD in Linguistics at the University of South Carolina under the supervision of Drs. Jiang Liu and Rutvik Desai. Her doctoral dissertation examined how native and non-native speakers perceive and process emotional information conveyed through semantic and prosodic channels. In 2026, Cheng joined the Feilong Lab, where she uses computational methods and neuroimaging data to investigate individual differences in language processing and learning.
Mengxin (AvA) Ran#
Lab Manager & Research Assistant
mran@mailbox.sc.edu | Google Scholar
@avaaaaran.bsky.social | @ran_mengxin | AvARan2001
AvA Ran received her B.S. in Psychology from The Ohio State University in 2024, where she worked with Prof. Julie Golomb. Before joining the Feilong Lab at the University of South Carolina, she worked as a lab manager in Prof. Oriel FeldmanHall’s Lab at Brown University. AvA is broadly interested in how the human brain represents and reconstructs narrative structure, and how shared and idiosyncratic patterns can be modeled computationally. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying narrative understanding and individual differences.