Neuroscience research on emotion has come far in the past few decades. However, nearly all research has been focused on either traditional emotion categories (Happy, Sad, Fearful, etc.) or bipolar spectrums thought to underlie our feelings (such as negative to positive valence). Additionally, the metacognitive judgements of our own feelings shape the experiences themselves. My work aims to use neuroscience to understand the ‘messier’ feelings we have traditionally overlooked. My dissertation projects focused on developing the methods and experimental designs necessary for this type of research. These projects’ results excitingly have shown for the first time that mixed feelings can be predicted on an individual subject basis from spatiotemporally consistent patterns in fMRI data.

Current projects include how mixed emotions during significant transitions in adults relate to changes in neural connectivity, and how mixed emotions relate to neural synchrony across individuals.