Research areas:

• Affect and Perspective Taking in social judgment and decision making

• Emotion Regulation - strategies and changes across adulthood

• Mechanisms and Neural Correlates

• Susceptibility and Resilience to emotional challenges

Research interests:

• Social and Personality Neuroscience

• Affective Neuroscience

• Cognitive and Affective Aging

• Emotional Wellbeing

The main research topic in the Dolcos Lab is Investigation of the Neural Mechanisms Underlying Interactions between Emotion & Cognition. Emotions can impact cognition by exerting both enhancing effects (e.g., better memory for emotional events) and impairing effects (e.g., increased emotional distractibility). Emotion processing, however, is also susceptible to cognitive influences, typically expressed as cognitive control of emotion or emotion regulation.

Investigation of the neural mechanisms underlying these phenomena is critical for understanding mood and anxiety disorders that are associated with intrusive recollection of distressing events and increased emotional distractibility, and are characterized by emotion dysregulation. The tendency to ruminate on negative emotions and memories observed in depressed patients, for instance, or increased emotional sensitivity observed in patients suffering from anxiety disorders affect tremendously the way these patients think and behave. Therefore, it has become apparent that findings cures for these disorders depends on understanding the brain mechanisms that are responsible for such dramatic changes in the ways emotion interfaces with cognition, leading to dysfunctional emotion-cognition interactions.