University of North Carolina Wilmington

Julian R. Keith, Ph.D.

Professor of Psychology at UNC Wilmington and Director of GAABS.

UNCW Profile

Featured teaching tools

Tools for thinking.

Three starting points for students and educators working with research methods. These custom GPTs are designed to support the reasoning behind a task.

Research Methods

ExperiMentor

For students planning a study

Helps students turn research ideas into stronger experimental designs by clarifying hypotheses, variables, controls, and the logic of a well-built study.

See an example task

Try asking: “I want to study whether background music affects recall. Help me define the variables and identify a confound.”

Illustrative response: Compare a music condition with a quiet condition, use the same recall task, and consider how music preference could affect the comparison.

Written to illustrate the task; not a recorded tool response. Actual responses vary.

Try ExperiMentor ↗

Statistics

Jamovi Stats Coach

For students learning statistics

Guides students through choosing, running, and interpreting analyses in jamovi, from t-tests to regression.

See an example task

Try asking: “I have recall scores from two independent groups. What should I check before choosing an analysis in jamovi?”

Illustrative response: Identify the outcome and group variable, inspect the distributions, and check whether the assumptions of the proposed analysis fit the design.

Written to illustrate the task; not a recorded tool response. Actual responses vary.

Try Jamovi Stats Coach ↗

Lab Simulation

LabSim GPT

For students practicing research decisions

Creates simulated lab experiences so students can practice research decisions, measurement, and interpretation when they cannot be at the bench.

See an example task

Try asking: “Walk me through a simulated memory experiment. Let me choose the design before showing me simulated results.”

Illustrative response: Choose conditions and a measurement strategy, examine simulated observations, and explain what the design allows you to conclude.

Written to illustrate the task; not a recorded tool response. Actual responses vary.

Try LabSim GPT ↗

These tools open in ChatGPT. Sign-in may be required; access depends on your account. Check generated guidance against your course materials and study design.

Explore six more tools for learning, communication, and AI literacy
Course Companion

Mindful Mentor

Supports the Buddhism and Modern Psychology course by helping students connect Buddhist psychology, contemplative practice, and cognitive science.

Open Mindful Mentor on ChatGPT

Communication

SuperCommunicators

Helps users practice listening, asking better questions, and matching their response to the conversation they are actually in.

Open SuperCommunicators on ChatGPT

AI Builder Coach

Agent Smith

Coaches students, faculty, staff, and administrators through designing useful custom AI assistants across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot.

Open Agent Smith on ChatGPT

Critical Thinking

Current Event Conversations

Helps users examine questions, ideas, and current events through context, inquiry, and competing interpretations rather than quick conclusions.

Open Current Event Conversations on ChatGPT

AI Literacy

Thinking About AI

A guide for making sense of AI without hype or panic. It helps users distinguish evidence from possibility, prediction, and argument while examining AI’s effects on learning, work, privacy, democracy, human agency, and risk.

Open Thinking About AI on ChatGPT

About

Research, teaching, and institutional AI work

I started at UNC Wilmington as an undergraduate, double-majoring in Psychology and Philosophy & Religion. That pairing of mechanism and meaning has shaped my work in neuroscience, teaching, and artificial intelligence.

I earned my Ph.D. in Psychology, with a behavioral neuroscience concentration, at the University of Colorado Boulder, training with Steven Maier and Jerry Rudy. I returned to UNCW as a faculty member in 1990.

My earlier research examined neuroplasticity, hippocampal neurogenesis, memory, cardiac surgery and cognition, neurofeedback, addiction recovery, and concussion assessment technology. My current work focuses on AI in higher education and the cognitive science of artificial systems.

After seven years chairing the Department of Psychology, I returned to faculty work with new questions about cognition, learning, and human-AI collaboration.

Research

Current focus

My current work is organized around two questions: how AI is changing higher education, and what cognitive psychology can reveal about artificial systems.

Higher Education

AI, Teaching, and Assessment

How should universities teach, assess, and mentor in an age of capable AI? I study faculty attitudes, adoption patterns, and practical ways to integrate AI without weakening student learning.

Cognitive Science

Machine Cognition

I apply the tools of cognitive psychology to AI systems: how they learn, remember, generalize, and fail, and where artificial systems diverge from human cognition.

Selected earlier work

Neuroplasticity, neurogenesis, and memory

NIMH R01-funded work on how new neurons added to the adult hippocampus contribute to learning, memory, and recovery after brain injury, combining electrophysiology, immunohistochemistry, confocal microscopy, and behavioral analysis.

Keith, Priester, Ferguson & Salling (2008). Behavioural Brain Research, 188, 391-397. Keith & Rudy (1990). Psychobiology, 18, 251-257.
Heart surgery, the brain, and clinical trials

NHLBI-funded studies examined cognitive outcomes related to cardiopulmonary bypass surgery and helped clarify risks in serial neuropsychological assessment.

Keith, Puente, Malcolmson, Tartt, Coleman & Marks (2002). Neuropsychology, 16, 411-421. Keith, Cohen & Lecci (2007). The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, 83, 370-373.
Neurofeedback for attention, ADHD, and pain

Randomized, sham-controlled trials of automated EEG biofeedback in adults with ADHD, residents of a substance-use treatment facility, and veterans with TBI and PTSD using mobile neurofeedback for pain management.

Keith, Rapgay, Theodore, Schwartz & Ross (2015). Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 29, 17-25. Elbogen et al., incl. Keith (2021). Pain Medicine, 22, 329-337.
Concussion assessment and machine learning

Validation work on accelerometer-based gait assessment and screening batteries for concussion in children, adolescents, and adults, including machine-learning models for neuropsychological research.

Keith, Williams, Taravath & Lecci (2019). A Clinician's Guide to Machine Learning in Neuropsychological Research and Practice. Journal of Pediatric Neuropsychology, 5, 177-187. Lecci et al., incl. Keith (2023). Journal of Concussion.
Minds, measurement, and meaning

Work on mindfulness and attention, psychometric instruments for interpersonal emotion, and contemplative practice and human enhancement.

Rapgay, Conchar & Keith (2025). Development and Validation of the Interpersonal Hate Questionnaire. Lifecycle Journal, 1. Keith, Blackwood, Mathew & Lecci (2017). Mindfulness, 93, 765-774. Keith (2018). Buddhist Biohackers: The New Enlightenment. In Posthumanism: The Future of Homo Sapiens. Macmillan.

View full publication record on Google Scholar

Teaching

Courses and public talks

My teaching emphasizes critical thinking, research methods, cognitive neuroscience, and the practical use of AI as a learning partner.

Graduate

Graduate Courses

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
  • Memory
  • Professional Development
Undergraduate

Undergraduate Courses

Currently teaching

  • Experimental Psychology
  • Buddhism and Modern Psychology
View past courses (11)
  • Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences
  • Motivation and Emotion
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
  • Psychology of Religion
  • The Self-Regulating Brain
  • Electroencephalography
  • History and Systems of Psychology
  • Introductory Psychology
Community

Public Lectures

Frequent talks for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, UNCW's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Cucalorus Connect, and area Rotary and Kiwanis clubs on brain health, Buddhism and modern psychology, and AI.

GAABS

Generative AI Agent Builders Studio

GAABS, the Generative AI Agent Builders Studio, is the applied tool-building arm of UNCW's AI Hub. GAABS helps faculty, staff, and students turn responsible AI ideas into practical tools, workflows, agents, and learning resources that support teaching, research, operations, and student success.

Career Timeline

Selected milestones

  1. 1983B.A., Psychology and Philosophy & Religion, UNC Wilmington
  2. 1990Ph.D., Psychology, University of Colorado Boulder; joined the UNCW faculty
  3. 2003-08NIMH R01: Functional Aspects of Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis
  4. 2015UNCW Distinguished Teaching Professorship and Board of Trustees Teaching Excellence Award
  5. 2015-2022Chair, Department of Psychology, UNCW
  6. NowDirector, Generative AI Agent Builders' Studio

Grant Support

Funded research

Three decades of federally funded work as principal investigator, spanning hippocampal neurogenesis, neurofeedback, and cognitive assessment after cardiac surgery.

View full grant history (5 more)

  • The Seahawk Brainwave and Attention Training Clinic

    Cape Fear Memorial Foundation Grant · Keith (PI) · 2012–2014

  • A New Approach at Identifying Patterns of Cognitive Decline in Patients with Dementia of the Alzheimer’s Type

    Alzheimer’s North Carolina (AlzNC) · Keith (PI) · 2012–2013

  • Proposal to obtain laser scanning confocal microscope

    NSF · Kinsey (PI), Keith (Co-I) · 2005

  • Stimulating Plastic Processes to Facilitate Functional Restitution after Cortical Stroke

    Canadian Stroke Network · Sutherland (PI), Keith (Co-I) · 2003–2005

  • Drugs of Abuse and Complex Behavior

    NIH R15 · Galizio (PI), Keith (Co-I) · 2000–2003

Personal

Beyond campus

A short personal note for visitors who want a fuller picture beyond teaching and research.

Endurance Athlete

On September 9, 1979, ninety-four racers waded into Banks Channel at Wrightsville Beach for one of North America's first triathlons. I was one of them. That same year I ran my first marathon, qualified for Boston as a teenager, and ran the Boston Marathon the following spring.

The 1979 race and nine of its original competitors are the subject of the 2024 documentary On Their First Tri.

Watch the documentary | View on IMDb

Poster for the documentary On Their First Tri
The Noseeums performing live with acoustic instruments under purple stage lights

The Noseeums

I am a member of The Noseeums, a Wilmington band playing y'allternative music around town a few times a month.

Instagram

Illustration for Gabriel Keith's AI agents and reinforcement learning research

Gabriel Keith

My son, Gabriel Keith, studies how AI agents learn to communicate and cooperate through reinforcement learning. He is also developing efficient approaches for training LLMs on consumer hardware.

Visit Gabriel Keith's website