Waisman Brain Imaging Brownbag Discussion Series

Speaker: Stacey Schaefer, PhD

Talk Title: Investigations of emotions, aging, and the brain to better understand the role of emotions in wellbeing and brain health across adulthood.

Description: Stacey M. Schaefer is a research scientist at the UW’s Institute on Aging and P.I. of the Affective Neuroscience component of the longitudinal, multi-project Midlife in the United States National Study of Health and Wellbeing (MIDUS). Her research focuses on identifying the linkages between individual differences in affective chronometry measures of emotional responses, health, wellbeing, and brain aging, as well as the sociodemographic, psychosocial, and lifestyle factors that moderate those relationships. In this talk, Stacey will review past and current findings from the MIDUS Neuroscience Project, as well as describe the potential of new follow-ups of the MIDUS samples beginning this summer. MIDUS, led by the UW-Madison Institute on Aging, recently received a 6-year, $62M renewal, which will support the first longitudinal psychophysiological and neuroimaging assessments of emotional responses in people from their 30s into their 90s and possibly 100s. Dr. Schaefer is also P.I. of a study in collaboration with Dr. Sterling Johnson in the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer Prevention examining how emotional processes may differ in preclinical AD, how these emotional differences relate to memory and cognition changes, as well as to tau and amyloid levels. She is also co-PI with Dr. Richard J. Davidson of a large R01 study examining how individual differences in the time course of emotional responses (measured with neuroimaging, psychophysiology, and ecological momentary assessment) are important for mental health, stress regulation, the immune system, cognition, and coping with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Join Us: Zoom https://uwmadison.zoom.us/j/97805666067?pwd=WWJ1YkxVZSt6NkhxTzkyTi9wckhodz09
Meeting ID: 978 0566 6067
Passcode: 768581