About

Wendy Heller is a Professor in the Biomedical and Translational Sciences department at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on the cognitive and affective neuroscience of psychopathology. She is involved in teaching courses such as Mindfulness Service Learning, Intervention & Assessment, and Neuropsychological Assessment, indicating her expertise in clinical and community psychology, neuropsychology, and mental health. Her work contributes to understanding the neural mechanisms underlying mental health disorders and applying this knowledge to clinical assessment and intervention.

Research topics

• Social Science
• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Neural and Psychological Correlates of Performance: FRZ2

  Open MIND · 2026-01-01

  otherOpen access

  Emotional states can be influenced by the presence and/or absence of threat in the environment. Broadly speaking, anxiety is considered to be an over-attendance to threat, which may encompass many dimensions of symptoms. In the face of threat, some people may tend to experience a defensive-freezing response, like a deer in the headlights. Freezing, thought to be a dimension of anxiety manifested in reduced heart rate (bradycardia), motor immobility, and increased muscle tone, is one of the most widely recognized defensive reactions to threat in nonhuman animals. Human freezing behavior remains underexplored, specifically when considering manifestations of this phenomenon that extend beyond immediate parasympathetic actions, such as cognitive and/or social facets of freezing. The brain-related correlates of human freezing behavior are also relatively understudied but are proposed to align with animal models of freezing, involving, among others, emotion relevant regions that are subcortical, like the amygdala, or deeper in the brainstem, like the periaqueductal gray. Given the sex differences in presentation and diagnosis of anxiety, which is more frequent in women, variations in freezing behavior may be informed by variations in menstrual hormones estradiol and progesterone, which, while historically understudied, have biological pathways for impact in the brain and the freezing behavior cascade. This lab has previously designed and conducted a large behavioral pilot study to assess diverse facets of freezing using a novel validated questionnaire (i.e., Anxious Freezing Questionnaire; AFQ). Details can be found in our recent publication (Marder et al., 2025; DOI: 10.1177/10731911251401405). The pilot study was pre-registered on OSF (Registration DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/R4EG7). The present study (FRZ2) is an extension of the previous study which was approved by the University’s Institutional Review Board and implemented. FRZ2 extends the previous paradigm and adapts it for use in the 7T MRI scanner. In addition, the previous study has been extended here to include the collection of blood samples for hormone concentrations. The FRZ2 project aims to examine the cognitive and emotional processes underlying freezing and their psychophysiological correlates. Specifically, we will assess the relationship between deep brain activation (e.g., STN, PAG), bradycardia, and task-dependent performance.

  PublisherDOI

• The Unknown Goddess, Opus 3, and the Art of Dissimulation

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2026-03-19

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Comparison of dimensionality reduction and feature selection for cognitive task decoding using functional connectivity

  Journal of Neuroscience Methods · 2026-03-28

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have led to the ability to study the brain across many contexts. However, the large number of features generated by functional connectivity approaches may overfit the data. These problems can be overcome with either feature selection (FS) or dimensionality reduction (DR), which can be applied to less complex models. We utilize two open source datasets to compare the performance of DR/FS methods on cognitive task decoding using a suite of ML classifiers. While FS and DR methods have been used previously in decoding research, no systematic comparison of their performance has been undertaken. Here, we compare available methods using commonly utilized machine learning libraries to establish which methods provide the best predictive performance. We then conduct statistical tests to examine the relative contributions of DR and FS methods and classifiers on decoding accuracy. Neither DR or FS was found to be superior. However, differences were identified across datasets and tasks. In the majority of methods and datasets, a peak in predictive performance was found using a small percentage (005-.10%) of the total number of original features. Some methods perform better than the baseline method of prediction with all available features or selecting features randomly. Decoding performance with some datasets with some method exceeds that of deep learning approaches. These results suggest a “sweet spot” for the tradeoff between the retention of features and predictive accuracy. • The present study compared a suite of dimensionality reduction (DR) and feature selection (FS) methods while using functional connectivity data for cognitive task decoding in two datasets • Neither DR or FS was found to be superior to each other • A “sweet spot” of using.005%-10% of the total number of functional connectivity features was found to be optimal for decoding accuracy • Using ridge regression with a suite of DR/FS methods, decoding performance exceeded that of state-of-the-art deep learning approaches

  PublisherDOI

• Strozzi’s Enigmatic Conclusions

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2026-03-19

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Co‐Regulation Within Adolescent Friendships

  Social Development · 2026-05-15

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  ABSTRACT Friendships assume an increasingly important role in socialization during adolescence, with the potential to help shape how youth cope with negative emotions and stressors. Extending theory and research on co‐rumination among friends, this study sought to examine an alternative novel socialization process within friendships—co‐reappraisal—that is hypothesized to promote healthier socioemotional adjustment in adolescents. Adolescents ( N = 330; M age = 15.0 years, SD = 1.5) reported on their tendency to engage in co‐rumination and co‐reappraisal within their friendships and their levels of internalizing symptoms and friendship quality. They also reported on associated constructs of intrapersonal rumination and cognitive reappraisal. Analyses revealed that co‐rumination and co‐reappraisal represent distinct, positively associated processes that are more common within the friendships of adolescent girls than boys. There was a significant positive indirect effect from gender to internalizing symptoms via co‐rumination and a significant negative indirect effect via co‐reappraisal. Whereas co‐reappraisal accounted for higher levels of friendship quality in girls than in boys, co‐rumination predicted lower friendship quality once co‐reappraisal and gender were taken into account. These results suggest the need to reconceptualize the precise nature of socioemotional trade‐offs of co‐regulation within friendships.

  PublisherDOI

• The Composer and Her Voice

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2026-03-19

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Imaging of Adolescent Emotion Processing

  OpenNeuro · 2026-05-01

  datasetOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Improving Mental Health in Adolescent Girls via a Randomized Trial of an Emotion Mindset Intervention

  Journal of Adolescent Health · 2025-12-13 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Cognitive Enhancement and Brain Plasticity in Mental Health

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-03-20

  book-chapterSenior author

  Abstract Mental health and well-being are inextricably linked to cognitive functioning. Alterations in specific cognitive processes such as attentional control, working memory, and executive function have been associated with a number of traditional diagnostic categories. In addition, interventions to improve these cognitive processes are increasingly being targeted as methods for amelioration of mental illness symptoms. These interventions vary in the extent to which their development is explicitly informed by research on neuroplasticity. This chapter reviews select interventions featuring cognitive enhancement including behavioral interventions, neuromodulation techniques, and exogenous agents, highlighting interventions associated with common mental health disorders that harness neuroplasticity to alleviate symptoms through cognitive enhancement. It also considers diverse conceptualizations of mental health and illness, including dimensional and transdiagnostic frameworks, and the importance of individual differences in mental health treatment and outcomes. Finally, in light of the diversity in both conceptualizations of mental illness and approaches to cognitive enhancement, this chapter calls for further translational research to expand our understanding of neuroplasticity and mental health and strengthen cognitive enhancement strategies for treatment and adaptive function more generally.

  PublisherDOI

• Reconceptualizing the relationship between anxiety, mindfulness, and cognitive control

  Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · 2025-04-09 · 3 citations

  reviewOpen access

  Prior research has provided initial support for the claim that cognitive control mediates the relationship between anxiety and mindfulness; however, findings are often inconsistent. In this review, we argue that the inconsistency may be due to a lack of both conceptual and methodological precision in terms of how anxiety, cognitive control, and mindfulness are operationalized and assessed, and that this imprecision may be a critical source of study confounds and ambiguous outcomes. We unpack this argument by first decomposing anxiety, cognitive control, mindfulness, and relevant experimental paradigms into key dimensions in order to develop a non-unitary, multi-dimensional taxonomy of these constructs. Subsequently, we review and reinterpret the prior experimental literature, focusing on studies that examine the relationship between anxiety and cognitive control, mindfulness and cognitive control, and the three-way relationship between anxiety, mindfulness, and cognitive control. Across the reviewed studies, there was great variation in the dimensions being examined and the behavioral and/or neural measures employed; therefore, results were often mixed. Based on this review of literature, we propose a conceptually and methodologically precise framework from which to study the effects of mindfulness on cognitive control in anxiety. The framework theoretically aligns anxiety dimensions with specific mindfulness states and interventions, further suggesting how these will impact specific cognitive control dimensions (proactive, reactive). These can be assessed with experimental paradigms and associated behavioral and neural metrics to index the relevant dimensions with high precision. Novel experimental studies and tractable research designs are also proposed to rigorously test this theoretical framework. • Prior research on anxiety, mindfulness, and cognitive control relationship is mixed. • Inconsistency due to conceptual and methodological imprecision in these constructs. • A non-unitary, multidimensional taxonomy is proposed. • Literature is reviewed and reconceptualized based on this taxonomy. • A novel framework and cognitive neuroscience research strategies are suggested.

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Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01MH061358

  NIH · $2.6M · 2011

• NIH Grant T32MH019554

  NIH · $3.3M · 2014

• NIH Grant R03MH052079

  NIH · $174k · 1997

• NIH Grant P50MH079485

  NIH · $17.4M · 2013

Frequent coauthors

• Gregory A. Miller

  Neurobehavioral Systems

  183 shared

• Roger Parker

  182 shared

• D. G. Charlton

  182 shared

• Carolyn Abbate

  182 shared

• Ellen Rosand

  182 shared

• Reinhard Strohm

  182 shared

• Arthur Groos

  Cornell University

  182 shared

• Mary Hunter

  179 shared

Labs

• Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience of Psychopathology LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Biopsychology

  University of Chicago

  1986