“The journey of  thousand miles begins with a single step”

Our developmental context influences who we become as adults at the social, personal, and yes, biological level. The Life History Lab seeks to understand how our pasts influence the body’s projected future and the biological trade-offs negotiated in this process.  This is at the core of our multi-faceted work and creativity is encouraged within this guiding principle. Here are current questions being asked in the lab.

How does access to economic and social resources in childhood shape adult neural endophenotypes?

Gonzalez, M. Z., Beckes, L., Chango., J., Allen., J.P., & Coan, J.A. (2015). Adolescent    neighborhood quality  predicts adult dACC response to social exclusion. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10, 921-928.

Gonzalez, M.Z., Coan, J.A., & Allen, J.P. (2016). Lower adolescent neighborhood quality, and not current income, predicts greater mesolimbic activation in response to reward anticipation. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 22, 48-57.

What genetic and epigenetic factors moderate environmentally derived neuroplasticity?

Gonzalez, M.Z., Puglia, M.H., Connelly, J.J., & Morris, J.P. (2017). OXTR genotype and economic privilege moderate VS activation and its association with social anxiety. Social  Neuroscience, 1-13. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2017.1403954

Gonzalez, M.Z, Wroblewski, K.A, Allen, J.P., Coan, J.A, Connelly, J.J. (in press). OXTR DNA  methylation moderates the developmental calibration of neural reward sensitivity.  Developmental Psychobiology.

How do adult social and motivational endophenotypes predict real-world coping strategies and health outcomes?

Coan, J.A., Beckes, L., Gonzalez, M.Z., Maresh, E.L, Brown, C., & Hasselmo, K. (2017)   Relationship status and perceived support in the social regulation of neural threat responding. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, nsx091. Advanced online publication. doi:10.1093/scan/nsx9.

Gonzalez, M.Z, Coppolla, A., Allen, J.P., Coan, J.A. (in review). Neural correlates of yielding to   social support  and real-world emotion regulation behavior: the moderating role of social  threat sensitivity. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology.

How can we improve upon our measures to serve our theoretical and empirical work?

Zhang, T., Pham, M., Gu, Q., Gonzalez, M.Z., Coan., J.A. (2018). A low rank multivariate general linear model of multi-subject fMRI data and an optimization algorithm for brain response comparison. NeuroImage.

Li, F., Zhang, T., Wang, Q., Gonzalez, M.Z., Maresh, E. L., & Coan, J. A. (2015) Spatial Bayesian variable selection and grouping in high-dimensional scalar-on-image  regressions. Annals of Applied Statistics,9, 687-713.

Zhang, T., Li, F., Gonzalez, M. Z., Maresh, E. L., & Coan, J. A. (2014). A semi-parametric nonlinear model for event-related fMRI. NeuroImage, 97, 178-187.

Coan, J. A & Gonzalez, M. Z. (2015). Emotions as emergent variables. In L.F. Barrett and J.A.  Russell (Eds.), The Psychological Construction of Emotions (pp. 209-226). New York:  Guildford Press.

Gerber, A. & Gonzalez, M. Z. (2013). Neuroimaging in clinical psychology research. In Phillip Kendal and John Comer (Eds.), Oxford handbook of research strategies in clinical psychology. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.