Research Description

Dr. Greening's research aims to elucidate the neurocognitive mechanisms involved in adapting to and controlling the influence of emotional events on the brain and behavior across the lifespan, and to determine how these mechanisms can be manipulated so as to promote mental wellbeing in both healthy individuals and those with mental illness. To this end, my lab is currently pursuing the following interests and related questions:

The neurocognitive mechanisms involved in controlling and adapting to emotions: How does varying cognitive demands change or modulate the representation of emotional features; and conversely how do emotionally salient objects alter cognitive processes like awareness, working memory and attention in early sensory cortices? How do phylogenetically older processes such as associative learning and extinction interact with higher-level cognitive processes?

Affective disorders, including depression, bipolar, and anxiety, and their development: Can we determine how early perceptual processes are influenced by, or are influencing, the maladaptive behavior observed in disorders of emotion? How do various treatment options, including pharmacological and alternatives like C.B.T., physical activity or meditation, affect the neurocognitive mechanisms of emotion regulation?

Dr. Greening's lab uses multiple methods including the cutting-edge neurocognitive/neuroimaging methods and analyses: Functional MRI (BOLD); diffusion tensor imaging (DTI); Multi-voxel pattern analysis; functional connectivity.

#Representative Publications:

Greening, S.G., Mennie, K., Lane, S.M. (In Press). Information technology impacts the experience and regulation of emotion. In Lane, S.M., Atchley, P (Eds.) Human Capacity in the Attention Economy. American Psychological Association

Roye, S., Castagna, P.J., Calamia, M., De Vito, A.N., Lee, T.H., Greening, S.G. (In Press). Relationships Between Multiple Dimensions of Executive Functioning and Resting-State Networks in Adults. Neuropsychologia.

Moen, K.C., Beck, M.R., Saltzmann, S.M., Cowan, T.M., Burleigh, L.M., Butler, L.G., Ramanujam, J., Cohen, A.S., Greening, S.G. (In Press). Strengthening spatial reasoning: Elucidating the attentional and neural mechanisms associated with mental rotation skill development. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications.

Grégoire, L., Greening, S.G. (2019). Fear of the known: Semantic generalization of fear conditioning across languages in bilinguals. Cognition and Emotion.

Grégoire, L., Greening, S.G. (2019). Opening the reconsolidation window using the mind's eye: Extinction training during reconsolidation disrupts fear memory expression following mental imagery reactivation. Cognition. 183: 277-281.

Lee, T.H., Greening, S.G., Ueno, T., Ponzio, A., Clewett, D., Sakaki, M., Mather, M. (2018). Arousal is associated with greater neural gain in younger adults but not in older adults. Nature: Human Behavior. 2: 356-366.

Greening, S.G., Mitchell, D.G.V., Smith, F.W. (2018). Spatially generalizable representations of facial expressions: Decoding across partial face samples. Cortex. 101:31-43.

Castagna, P.J., Roye, S, Calamia, M., Owens-French, J., Davis III, T.E., Greening, S.G. (2018). Parsing the neural correlates of anxious apprehension and anxious arousal in development: an examination of cortical thickness in youth. Brain Imaging and Behavior. 12(4): 1084-1098.

Greening, S.G., Mitchell, D.G.V. (2015). A network of amygdala connections predict individual differences in trait anxiety. Human Brain Mapping. 36(12): 4819-30.