Regina Lapate

Biography

Dr. Regina Lapate earned her PhD in 2015 under the mentorship of Dr. Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied the function of conscious awareness in emotion, and the neural correlates of successful emotion regulation. In 2016, she was awarded an NIH postdoctoral fellowship to examine the representational properties and causal mechanisms of lateral prefrontal function in emotion with Dr. Mark D'Esposito at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2018, she co-edited the 2nd edition of The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions.

Research

The Lapate Experimental Affective Psychology and Neuroscience Laboratory (LEAP Neuro Lab) at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) investigates mechanisms that give rise to subjective emotional experiences, determine the influence of emotional signals, and promote adaptive responding to emotional events. Our research examines questions such as: ·

• How do we perceive and become aware of emotional stimuli?
• What neural mechanisms promote successful emotion regulation?
• How do representations in distinct prefrontal regions modulate emotion-driven behavior?

To answer these questions, we use a multimodal approach that emphasizes causal inference, and includes recordings of peripheral physiology, electroencephalography, and functional neuroimaging—often combined with behavioral assays and analyses anchored in individual differences. The long term goal of our research program is to uncover basic mechanisms underlying function and dysfunction in emotion generation and regulation that promote wellbeing and reduce vulnerability to psychopathology.