Alexandra Cohen
Emory University, GA·Psychology·Early-career
Why do some emotional or rewarding experiences stick in memory far longer than others, and how does this change from childhood to adulthood? Many mental health conditions, including anxiety and addiction, first appear in childhood or adolescence.
- Fields
Psychology
Neuroscience
- Topics
emotional memory
reward-motivated memory
dopamine
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Feb 2031
What they work on
- Test how emotions triggered by wins and losses in a probabilistic reinforcement learning task affect memory and dopamine- and norepinephrine-linked brain function, comparing children, adolescents and adults.
- Assess how naturalistic emotion during emotional video watching relates to later memory and brain activity across development, using behavioral, psychophysiological and neuroimaging measures.
- Track age-related change in catecholamine system function over time using neuromelanin-sensitive MRI as a proxy, and relate it to everyday emotional memory.
- Identify age-related changes in the brain mechanisms that make reward-motivated memories persist, testing whether adolescent reward sensitivity strengthens them, using neuroimaging and computational modeling.
- Determine how real-world positive moods, captured with ecological momentary assessment, relate to memory, substance use and mesolimbic dopamine system connectivity from childhood to adulthood.
More about the research
Lasting memories of strongly positive or negative events can help start these conditions and keep them going. Both of the lab's projects study how the brain's signaling chemicals that heighten attention and reward shape which memories last, tracking these processes across development.
Why it matters
Adolescence is a period of high risk for developing anxiety and substance use disorders. Knowing how emotional and rewarding experiences become lasting memories at different ages could identify brain-based profiles linked to that risk. It could also highlight targets for early interventions that support healthy development and help prevent substance use disorders in young people.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Johanna Jarcho
Temple University, PA·Psychology
Compare brain responses to social reward (being liked by peers) and non-social reward (winning money) in autistic and neurotypical adolescents aged 10–15, using a purpose-built fMRI feedback task.
Cecilia Hinojosa
University of New Mexico, NM·Neuroscience·Early-career
Define sex differences in reward-related brain circuitry, including the striatum, that relate to alcohol craving and drinking in trauma-exposed women and men, using functional neuroimaging.
Erin Kaufman
University of Utah, UT·Psychology·Early-career
Compare an interpersonal skill (GIVE) with an intrapersonal skill (opposite-to-emotion action) for reducing emotion dysregulation in self-injuring adolescents, using a randomized crossover design with parent–teen conflict discussions.
The school
Emory University: 70 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 286 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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