Team

Jonathan P. Stange, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Principal Investigator, Cognition and Affect Regulation (CAR) Lab
Department of Psychology
University of Southern California

Dr. Stange’s research focuses on identifying mechanisms and outcomes of inflexible cognitive and affective processes in mood disorders. His current work seeks to identify how interactions between cognitive and affective processes underlies maladaptive affect regulation and risk for problems such as depression and suicide. This work involves the use of neuroimaging, autonomic psychophysiology, and experimental, behavioral, and longitudinal methods. Dr. Stange has particularly focused on measuring affect regulation outside of the lab in “real-world” contexts using ambulatory assessment techniques (e.g., wearables to measure autonomic psychophysiology and behavior with ecological momentary assessment). These methods may have greater ecological validity than traditional laboratory-based methods and can elucidate dynamic processes that occur within individuals over time. By improving our understanding of how risk factors vary between individuals, and within individuals across contexts, Dr. Stange’s goal is to inform real-time, person-centered metrics for detecting moments of risk and for intervening to reduce risk and improve affect regulation.

Ellie Xu

Graduate Student

Ellie is a second-year graduate student in the CAR Lab. Ellie is interested in understanding how emotion regulation flexibility, affect instability, and the interpersonal context play a role in risk and resilience in depression. Ellie is excited to integrate real-time measures and neuroimaging methods in her work in the CAR Lab.

Jiani (Janet) Li

Graduate Student

All of us experience negative emotions at some point in our life, yet some of us seem to cope with them better. How so, and why? Furthermore, how do such individual differences manifest through various channels of emotion — physiological, neural, behavioral, experiential, and expressive? Finally, can we tailor the type and timing of treatments to one’s idiosyncrasies in emotion regulation? In the CAR Lab, Jiani (Janet) is excited to tackle these questions by examining emotion regulation in naturalistic settings at multiple levels of analysis. In doing so, she hopes to parse individual variations in how we experience and respond to negative emotions — processes strongly tied to symptoms of mood disorders — and to inform individualized treatments accordingly.

Sarah Zapetis

Graduate Student

Sarah is a first-year graduate student in the CAR lab interested in examining the biobehavioral mechanisms of cognitive inflexibility and maladaptive affect regulation in mood disorders. She is eager to integrate neuroimaging methods with ambulatory autonomic psychophysiology and ecological momentary assessment techniques to investigate how inflexible cognitive and biological processes contribute to affective dysregulation and the development and persistence of mood disorders.

Margarid Turnamian

Graduate Student

Margarid (she/her) is a first year graduate student interested in understanding how emotional dysregulation may lead to more persistent depression by evaluating the relationship between daily fluctuations in depressive symptoms, physiological arousal and emotional regulation processes. She is particularly eager to utilize ecologically valid assessments to investigate these relationships. Margarid is also passionate about working with marginalized communities and hopes her work can provide insight into existing mental health disparities and influence positive change in local communities.