Award for distinguished contributions to psychophysiology: Gregory A. Miller

The Society for Psychophysiological Research (SPR) presented the 2013 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychophysiology to Prof. Gregory A. Miller. The Senior Awards Committee makes this decision to recognize those who have contributed the most to the discipline. Greg has a distinguished career characterized by important contributions in several domains of research and scholarship in psychophysiology. After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard in 1975, Greg received a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison with major emphasis in clinical psychology and minor in human psychophysiology. Peter J. Lang was his graduate advisor; he also took classes from Frances K. Graham and received clinical supervision from David Graham. With an internship in clinical health psychology at Rush Presbyterian–St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago under his belt, he was hired immediately after graduation by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an assistant professor of psychology in 1982. At Illinois, he served as associate director of Clinical Training from 1984–1987, and director of Clinical Training and associate head of the department from 1990–1993. He was promoted to full professor in 1993 and was appointed the Richard and Margaret Romano Professorial Scholar from 2007–2010. An active clinician and clinical supervisor of inpatient diagnosis and outpatient psychotherapy, he chaired the State of Illinois Clinical Psychologist Licensing and Disciplinary Board from 2004–2006. At Illinois, Greg served as the director of Clinical Training at a crucial time of transition for the clinical/community psychology Ph.D. program and then as the leader of the Cognitive Neuroscience Group based at the Beckman Institute. He was the prime mover in establishing a human-friendly imaging center on campus, ceaselessly lobbying for the funding and resources needed, and subsequently serving twice as director of the Biomedical Imaging Center. He was also involved in work related to ethics and human subjects, some of which has been published, and served on a variety of committees dealing with IRB policies and procedures. Greg has had appointments as adjunct professor of psychiatry at Illinois and at the University of New Mexico. In 2009, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Konstanz, Germany, and was appointed a senior fellow in the Zukunftskolleg (a free-standing institute of the University of Konstanz) 2009–2013. The University of Delaware hired him in 2011 to grow the Department of Psychology as department chair, and in 2013 UCLA hired him as Distinguished Professor and Chair. Beyond his many publications, Greg has had a huge qualitative impact on the field of psychophysiology as a scholar and thinker. He has made several highly significant contributions that have advanced the field theoretically and that will continue to do so in the future. Perhaps Greg's most original, groundbreaking, and in the long run most important work will prove to be his critique of naive reductionism in psychology and neuroscience and its policy implications for our field. It is to be hoped that his article, “Mistreating Psychology in the Decades of the Brain” (Miller, 2010), will change the very nature of how we talk about the relationship between biology and psychology. In this article, Greg singlehandedly and masterfully challenged the national rhetoric about the brain and psychology. In doing so, he took on the field of psychophysiology, the medical establishment, a cadre of leading cognitive neuroscientists, the machinery of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and the public at large. This beautifully argued and articulated work brings to mind one of the greatest thinkers in psychology, who overturned many assumptions and forecasted many insights and principles that we now take for granted—William James, the creative and brilliant thinker whose name is bestowed on the Psychology building at Greg's alma mater Harvard. We can hear the influence of Peter Lang and Paul Meehl in this article, too. Regardless, it takes an incisive mind coupled with a courageous soul to risk going against the overwhelming tide of current thought in the way Greg has done in this series of presentations, chapters, and articles (Miller, 1996, Presidential Address; Miller, Clayson, & Yee, 2014; Miller, Engels, & Herrington, 2007; Miller & Keller, 2000; Miller & Rockstroh, 2013; Miller, Rockstroh, Hamilton, & Yee, 2016; Miller & Yee, 2015), exemplified by the one highlighted here. The impact of this work has not reached its apex and will continue to expand as it becomes more widely known. Another important area in which Greg has contributed is that of methodology. In looking at Greg's vita, one sees a stunning sweep of expertise and perspective across multiple methodologies, including digital filtering (Cook & Miller, 1992; Edgar & Miller, 2013; Edgar, Stewart, & Miller, 2005; Nitschke, Miller, & Cook, 1998), EKG (Miller, 1986), EEG (e.g., Miller, Gratton, & Yee, 1988; Popov, Rockstroh, Popova, Carolus, & Miller, 2014), ERP (e.g., Miller, Lutzenberger, & Elbert, 1991; Picton et al., 2000; Yee & Miller, 1994), MEG (e.g., Ho, Ombao, Edgar, Cañive, & Miller, 2008; Keil et al., 2014; Lu et al., 2007), and fMRI (e.g., Astolfi et al., 2007; Herrington, Sutton, & Miller, 2007; Spielberg et al., 2014; Sutton, Ouyang, Karampinos, & Miller, 2009), tackling cutting-edge issues across domains, spanning statistical issues and neural connectivity estimation. Some of these groundbreaking contributions have made him a “household” name in research in psychology and psychophysiology. This article is especially well known—Miller & Chapman (2001) “Misunderstanding analysis of covariance.” In this article, Greg addresses fundamental problems with the use of analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) as an approach to dealing with substantive group or condition differences on potential covariates. Just recently, I was at a very well-attended preconference workshop at SPR on multilevel modeling, and someone in the audience asked whether there were implications for the issues raised in Miller and Chapman. Without missing a beat, the presenter said, “Of course,” answered the question, and then as an afterthought said, “Sorry, I assumed everyone knew that paper—if not, you should read it.” Greg had an early and abiding interest in normal emotion and its role in psychopathology. In his work, emotion has been framed as a key feature of dysfunction, as a risk factor, and as a playmate with cognition. In fact, he has often argued that cognition and emotion are not separable as is commonly conceived. He is one of many pioneers of a subdomain of psychophysiology sometimes called affective neuroscience. His work frequently combines methodological innovations in psychophysiology, especially neuroimaging in recent years, in pursuit of substantive findings that shed light on critical issues in psychopathology, cutting across multiple domains such as schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, and individual-difference variables that influence risk for psychopathology (e.g., Banich et al., 2009; Crocker et al., 2013; Edgar et al., 2013; Fisher et al., 2010; Huang et al., 2010; Hur et al., 2015; Mohanty et al., 2005; Pietrek, Popov, Steffen, Miller, & Rockstroh, 2012; Popov, Wienbruch, Miller, & Rockstroh, 2015; Sadeh, Spielberg, Warren, Miller, & Heller, 2014; Sadek, Miller, & Cañive, 2015; Sass et al., 2010; Spielberg, Miller, Heller, & Banich, 2015; Stewart et al., 2010; Warren, Miller, & Heller, 2008; Weber et al., 2009). In pursuit of this research, Greg has frequently cited important, long-term collaborations with Wendy Heller and graduate students at Illinois, Marie Banich at the University of Colorado, Jose Cañive and Christopher Edgar at the University of New Mexico, and Brigitte Rockstroh, Thomas Elbert, and Tzvetan Popov at the University of Konstanz in Germany. Greg has been a source of many methodological innovations in psychophysiology with respect to psychopathology. In addition to pioneering the use of dimensional approaches in studies of brain activity, Greg and his collaborators were among the first to combine structural MRI (sMRI), fMRI, and EEG/ERP source localization. In this work, they examined the effects of depression and anxiety on regional brain activity in a network involved in top-down control of attention during cognitive and emotional challenges (Banich et al., 2009; Crocker et al., 2012; Engels et al., 2007, 2010; Heller, Etienne, & Miller, 1995; Heller, Nitschke, Etienne, & Miller, 1997; Herrington et al., 2005, 2010; Silton et al., 2010, 2011; Warren et al., 2010). In general, their research adopted a dimensional conceptualization of psychopathology that cut across various disorders, a forerunner of, and contributor to, the current emphasis in the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health Research Domain Criteria initiative (Kozak & Cuthbert, 2016). In fact, Greg had a fundamental impact on the design and conceptualization of the RDoC initiative, about which he has recently been asked to write a series of commentaries in diverse outlets that will likely have a significant impact (Miller, Clayson, & Yee, 2014; Miller et al., 2016; Miller & Yee, 2015; Yee, Javitt, & Miller, 2015). Although the Distinguished Contributions Award is weighted toward scholarly impact, Greg's contributions to SPR are unusually extensive. He has served as convention program chair, secretary-treasurer, and president, as associate editor and editor of our journal, as chair of the Publication Committee, and as a member of a number of other committees. In addition to his formal appointments, and equally important, Greg has provided informal support and advice to many young scholars, officers, and committee members. He has tirelessly promoted diversity in his personal and professional relationships and has had a powerful, often hidden, impact on diversity at universities and in the SPR membership. Greg has empowered women at every level, from students to junior and senior faculty, many of whom have risen to highly visible and important roles in the field. Greg also went out of his way to support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered faculty and students. He has also acted in other more obvious and official capacities to support diversity. For example, Greg collaborated with Bob Simons to organize the first diversity symposium to take place at an SPR convention, in Vancouver in 1996 (Miller, 1996, October). Greg is a wonderful collaborator. He is detail oriented, conscientious, and always responsive. He is thorough in his feedback and generous with his time. He is a great listener and a font of knowledge, wisdom, and insight. His commitment to his students is legendary. Over the years, many of his students and colleagues have benefited from his advice, often at the last minute, in the middle of the night, or in some sort of crisis, with no obvious evidence that we are burdening him. The following e-mail message from a former student captures the spirit of many that I received in preparing this tribute: “One thing that stands out for me is how incredibly helpful and selfless Greg was with the professional decisions I faced over the past 2 years. He gave me some of the most important advice and encouragement I have ever received. It was about the importance of my family and balancing career and family. I still think about his advice almost daily. The advice was priceless, but what I'm still really in awe about is how effortlessly he gave it to me, generously giving his time and thoughtfulness during that whole period. I'll never know how to thank him for that, and I can't imagine being able to be so focused and helpful, of giving that much energy, to someone who was already some distance and time removed.” Greg's passion for science, for psychophysiology, and for mentoring and training others comes through in almost any interaction with him. His commitment to his scholarship, his students, and his collaborators is unwavering. This well-deserved award acknowledges his contributions thus far, and honors the continuing impact he will have on the field and the scientists who will shape it.

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