Welcome to LUNA!

Research Interests:

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

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. Currently, my line of research is focused on characterizing cognitive and affective processes underlying nightmares using multimodal methods (e.g., ecological momentary assessment, polysomnography, actigraphy, computerized tasks). Other lines of research to be pursued include use of ambulatory technology to identify sleep biomarkers of Alzheimer’s risk, environmental influences on sleep health disparities, and precision behavioral sleep medicine.