We study thought, communication, and psychopathology

We study how our thoughts follow one another, how we regulate and communicate our thoughts, and how individual differences in thought dynamics and regulation relate to psychopathology and social interaction. 

We strive to elucidate the basic mechanisms that help us maintain a coherent train of thought and regulate thoughts and their expression in accordance with personal and interpersonal goals. 

We study these questions by integrating introspective, behavioral, and computational methods. We use EEG hyperscanning to study how neural representations of meaning adapt to interpersonal context. We also develop theory-driven natural language processing approaches to examine mechanisms underlying communication and interpersonal alignment.

We believe that answering these questions can help elucidate a variety of mental health problems (e.g., psychosis, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder), and indeed, a considerable part of our research focuses on trying to understand the mechanisms underlying abnormal thought dynamics.