Welcome to LUNA!

Research Interests:

• Mechanisms of trauma-related sleep disturbances
• Sleep disturbance as a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology
• Neurobiology of sleep
• Biobehavioral predictors of sleep health

Research in the Laboratory for Understanding Nocturnal behaviors and Affect (LUNA) broadly centers on how disrupted sleep acts as both precipitating and exacerbating factors of psychopathology, particularly in the context of trauma and stress. Current lines of research include identifying sleep biomarkers of Alzheimer’s risk, cognitive/affective predictors of nightmares, environmental influences on sleep health, and precision behavioral sleep medicine. Research studies involve use of multimodal methods (e.g., ecological momentary assessment, polysomnography, actigraphy, computerized tasks).