Alcohol and Substance Use Disorders; Externalizing; Electroencephalogram/Event-Related Potentials (EEG/ERPs); Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA); Behavioral Economics; Behavioral Genetics
Primary Research Area: Clinical Science
My program of research is dedicated to two broad streams of work. First, I seek to understand a comprehensive, ontogenetic account of the etiology of addiction. By this, I mean that I want to understand the spectrum of risk for addiction all the way from liabilities for addiction - dispositional factors the predate use of substances - as well as consequences of chronic, heavy use that maintain a Substance Use Disorder. I have special interest in reward-related and cognitive control-related (broadly defined) processes that interact to influence vulnerability to and trajectory of harmful substance use. Second, I have become quite interested in Black mental health. In particular, I am doing work to 1) document the egregious lack of representation of Black individuals in psychophysiological and neuroscientific work, 2) understand the mechanisms by which our these technologies and methods may lead to this underrepresentation, and 3) how to resolve these technological and scientific limitations. In doing so, I believe we will build better technology, stronger and more generalizable science, and more accurate models of psychopathology and its underlying physiological processes.
