Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention

Director: Peter J. Lang, Ph.D.
Department: Clinical and Health Psychology
Phone: (352) 392-2439
Web: http://csea.phhp.ufl.edu/

Faculty and students at the multi-disciplinary Center for Research in Emotion and Attention (CSEA) are engaged in basic and applied research in human emotion, as emotion modulates attention, perception, memory, and other cognitive processes. Experiments conducted at the Center have addressed emotion’s autonomic and somatic reflex physiology, its behavioral expression, and evaluative-report indices. Using electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging, CSEA investigators are exploring the brain structures that mediate emotional reactivity, assessing neural circuit activation and connectivity in the context of external affective cues and memory imagery. An important applied focus of CSEA research is the study of anxiety and mood disorders, undertaken with patients from the Fear and Anxiety Disorders Clinic, a Health Center specialty clinic that is part of the Center laboratory complex.

The Center provides laboratory training in psychophysiology and neural imaging research methods at the Post-Doctoral, Graduate Student, and Post-Baccalaureate levels. Center affiliated Investigators include faculty from the Clinical and Health Psychology (PHHP), Psychology (CLAS), and the Departments of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering at UF. In addition to its resident faculty, the Center benefits from frequent visits of its affiliated investigators from the broader, US and international research communities.