Research

Music Cognition examines the processes through which music is perceived, experienced, created, and processed. At the Clinical Neuropsychology Lab, we are studying how certain ways we process music can help shed light on various psychopathological processes, such as how studying earworms can help us understand intrusive thoughts.

 

Automatic Inhibition refers to our ability to stop an action or thought once it has become irrelevant or inefficient. Deficits in successful inhibition have been linked to several psychopathologies. The Clinical Neuropsychology Lab focuses on studying the relationship between inhibition and its transdiagnostic influence on psychopathology. Current projects in the lab are focusing on furthering our understanding of how inhibition works, and on the relationship between inhibition and compulsive symptoms.

 

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a disorder characterized by marked changes in arousal, increased avoidance, negative changes in cognitions and affect, and intrusive symptoms following a traumatic event. In our lab, we are currently studying secondary PTSD by examining how trauma symptoms manifest in parents of Israeli soldiers who experienced trauma during Operation Protective Edge. Several of the projects we are working on regarding Automatic Inhibition have implications for PTSD as well.

 

Emotional Regulation, our ability to respond flexibly and appropriately to changing circumstances, plays a central role in our understanding psychopathology and in treatments for various disorders. Our research focuses on better understanding the cognitive mechanisms that impact successful regulation of emotions, as well as how emotional regulation is impacted in anxiety disorders.