Research
Our research in the CANA lab investigates the intersection of emotion and cognition across the adult lifespan. To date, this research has focused on two central questions, 1) how does aging affect emotional control abilities? and 2) how does emotional information affect the cognitive and neural processes critical for memory?
Effects of emotion on attention and memory |
Much of my research has focused on the effects of emotion on memory encoding of emotional items. Emotional information can attract attention more rapidly and enhance memory strength, relative to neutral information. Within emotional images, however, both young and older adults are biased to remember an emotional foreground item at the expense of the background, even when not instructed to do so. We have examined the behavioral characteristics and fMRI neural correlates underlying this selective memory for emotional scenes. In a behavioral study, we found that duration of consolidation period and emotional valence (how positive or negative) interact to shape how emotional memory is constructed differently in young and older adults. Moreover, we identified significant age-related changes in the underlying brain connectivity networks producing selective memory for emotionally positive and negative items from scenes.
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Approaches
We use a variety of approaches to investigate these questions: behavioral (e.g., accuracy, response time), MRI (brain activation and networking), neuropsychological (assessments of thinking and wellbeing), EEG (the brain's electrical activity on the surface of the head), and psychophysiology (e.g., heart rate).
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