Welcome to the Clinical Stress and Emotion Lab

The Clinical Stress and Emotion Lab (cSEL) is a research laboratory designed for the study of various aspects of mental disorders, including contributing factors such as stress, emotion, emotion regulation, cognitive appraisal and sleep. It is also a teaching laboratory, training master’s students, doctoral researchers, postdocs, and visiting scholars in the elicitation, measurement and analysis of stress and emotion processes relevant for better understanding mental disorders using behavioral, autonomic, endocrine, electrocortical and brain imaging methods (using the departmental magnetic resonance imaging scanner).

Laboratory assessments are complemented by ambulatory monitoring in daily life to ascertain ecological validity of laboratory findings. This research ultimately aims at identifying risk and resilience factors in mental disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and depression to help develop better cognitive-behavioral treatments for people with mental health problems.