Claudia Lugo-Candelas

Why is it that some can stand the toughest of emotional situations and barely twitch, but others absolutely loose it at the smallest provocation? How early in our lives do our brains start processing complex emotional situations with adult-like efficiency and at what age can we already see signs of disrupted emotion processing? My name is Claudia Lugo-Candelas, I am a graduate student in the clinical psychology program at UMass Amherst, and I hope to one day be able to answer that question. I am originally from Puerto Rico, where I obtained a B.A. from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. I obtained my M.S. in Clinical Psychology from UMass Amherst, and my work explored the influence of culture in parents' emotion socialization practices. I am currently studying the neural correlates of emotion processing in both typically developing preschoolers and those who show hyperactivity. My main research interests include emotion regulation processes and deficits in young children with disruptive behavior disorders. I one day hope to be able to use neuroscience technologies to explore how context and biology interact in shaping our ability to process emotions across the lifespan.

January 2015