About

Sanda Monica Dolcos is a Research Assistant Professor in the departments of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Illinois. She is also a program affiliate of the Social & Behavioral Sciences Institute. Her research focuses on the neural correlates of emotion-cognition interactions, with particular emphasis on brain imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Dolcos investigates the divergent effects of emotion on cognition, including how arousal influences memory for details surrounding unpleasant events and the mechanisms underlying emotion regulation. Her work integrates multimodal imaging approaches to study human brain function and plasticity, contributing to emerging methods and applications in cognitive enhancement and brain plasticity. Dolcos has also explored the role of sex differences in the link between emotion regulation and psychological well-being during major mental health crises, as well as moral judgment processes under uncertainty. Her research outputs include numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters that advance understanding of episodic memory, amygdala function, and the neural basis of behavior in clinical and healthy populations.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Neuroscience
• Social psychology
• Computer Science
• Psychotherapist
• Psychiatry
• Communication

Selected publications

• The Role of Sex Differences in the Link Between Emotion Regulation and Psychological Well-Being During a Major Mental Health Crisis

  Behavioral Sciences · 2025-05-07 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Emotion regulation (ER) strategies, such as reappraisal and suppression, have been linked to psychological well-being. The available evidence points to the differential impact of ER strategies on resilience and post-traumatic growth (PTG), as factors related to well-being, as well as to sex differences in the link between ER preference and well-being. However, previous studies are mixed regarding these links. To address this issue, college students (N = 1254) recruited between 2020 and 2023 reported their habitual use of ER strategies, resilience and PTG during the COVID-19 pandemic, which, as a global health crisis, has raised not only severe physical health concerns but also mental distress. First, reappraisal was positively associated with both resilience and PTG, whereas suppression was negatively correlated with these measures. Second, female participants had lower suppression scores and higher PTG scores than male participants. Third, a moderation analysis showed that the positive relationship between reappraisal and PTG was stronger in female participants, whereas the negative relationship between suppression and PTG was stronger in male participants. Overall, these findings shed light on the links among ER strategies, resilience, and PTG and have relevance for customized training in the use of reappraisal to increase well-being in women and men.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Multimodal Imaging Investigations of Human Brain Function and Plasticity

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-07-22

  book-chapter

  Abstract Individual methods measuring brain function typically provide only partial information about the links between spatial and temporal aspects of neural activity associated with psychological phenomena and their plasticity. Multimodal approaches offer the possibility of elucidating these links by capitalizing on the strengths of combining multiple techniques. This chapter briefly discusses some of the benefits and challenges of multimodal brain recordings and provides some select examples of approaches capitalizing on techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography / event-related potentials (EEG/ERP), event-related optical signals (EROS), and positron emission tomography (PET), as well as some combinations of these methods along with their possible applications to examining aspects of brain plasticity. Included among the examples is a recent proof-of-concept protocol for a novel technique using simultaneously recorded fMRI, ERP, and EROS. Results from the examples highlight ways in which multimodal approaches can capture and integrate converging and complementary measures of brain activity that are not currently possible using typical unimodal techniques. Overall, multimodal approaches offer new opportunities for examining complex aspects of brain function and plasticity that can significantly contribute to better understanding and supporting brain health.

  PublisherDOI

• Dissociating and linking divergent effects of emotion on cognition: insights from current research and emerging directions

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2025-05-14 · 3 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  This century has witnessed unprecedented increasing interest in the investigation of emotion-cognition interactions and the associated neural mechanisms. The present review emphasizes the need to consider the various factors that can influence enhancing and impairing effects of emotion on cognition, in studies of both healthy and clinical groups. First, we discuss advances in understanding the circumstances in which emotion enhances or impairs cognition at different levels, both within the same processes (e.g., perception, episodic memory) and across different processes (i.e., episodic vs. working memory). Then, we discuss evidence regarding these opposing effects of emotion in a larger context, of the response to stressors, and linked to the role of individual differences (personality, genetic) affecting stress sensitivity. Finally, we also discuss evidence linking these opposing effects of emotion in a clinical group (PTSD), where they are both deleterious, and based on comparisons across groups with opposing affective biases: healthy aging ( positive bias ) vs. depression ( negative bias ). These issues have relevance for understanding mechanisms of emotion-cognition interactions in healthy functioning and in psychopathology, which can inspire training interventions to increase resilience and well-being.

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• How Likely Is it that I Would Act the Same Way: Modeling Moral Judgment During Uncertainty

  Cognitive Science · 2024-11-01

  articleOpen access

  Moral rules come with exceptions, and moral judgments come with uncertainty. For instance, stealing is wrong and generally punished. Yet, it could be the case that the thief is stealing food for their family. Such information about the thief's context could flip admonishment to praise. To varying degrees, this type of uncertainty regarding the context of another person's behavior is ever-present in moral judgment. Hence, we propose a model of how people evaluate others' behavior: We argue that individuals principally judge the righteousness of another person's behavior by assessing the likelihood that they would act the same way if they were in the person's shoes. That is, if you see another person steal, you will consider the contexts where you too would steal and assess the likelihood that any of these contexts are true, given the available information. This idea can be formalized as a Bayesian model that treats moral judgment as probabilistic reasoning. We tested this model across four studies (N = 601) involving either fictional moral vignettes or economic games. The studies yielded converging evidence showing that the proposed model better predicts moral judgment under uncertainty than traditional theories that emphasize social norms or perceived harm/utility. Overall, the present studies support a new model of moral judgment with the potential to unite research on social judgment, decision-making, and probabilistic reasoning. Beyond this specific model, the present studies also more generally speak to how individuals parse uncertainty by integrating across different possibilities.

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• Measuring cognitive flexibility: A brief review of neuropsychological, self-report, and neuroscientific approaches

  Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · 2024-02-19 · 72 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Cognitive flexibility involves dynamic processes that allow adaptation of our thinking and behavior in response to changing contextual demands. Despite a large consensus about its beneficial effects, cognitive flexibility is still poorly understood. In this mini review, we examined the main conceptualizations and approaches for assessing cognitive flexibility: (1) neuropsychological tasks, (2) self-report questionnaires, and (3) neuroscientific approaches. The reviewed evidence shows that the definition and assessment of cognitive flexibility are not unified within the field and suggests that a more consensual and consistent conceptualization and operationalization of this important concept is needed. We propose that an integrative behavior-brain-context approach can help advance our understanding of cognitive flexibility.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reconciling opposing effects of emotion on relational memory: Behavioral, eye-tracking, and brain imaging investigations.

  Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2024-09-19 · 16 citations

  articleSenior author

  (item-context match) RM accuracy, (2) accounting for emotion-attention interactions via eye-tracking and task manipulation, and (3) using stimuli with integrated item-context content. Challenging the prevalent view, we identified both enhancing and impairing effects. First, emotion enhanced subjective RM, separately and when confirmed by accurate objective RM. Second, emotion impaired objective RM through attention capturing, but it enhanced RM accuracy when attentional effects were statistically accounted for using eye-tracking data. Third, emotion also enhanced RM when participants were cued to focus on contextual details during encoding, likely by increasing item-context binding. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging data recorded from a subset of participants showed that emotional enhancement of RM was associated with increased activity in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, along with increased intra-MTL and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex-MTL functional connectivity. Overall, these findings reconcile evidence regarding opposing effects of emotion on RM and point to possible training interventions to increase RM specificity in healthy functioning, posttraumatic stress disorder, and aging, by promoting item-context binding and diminishing memory decontextualization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Investigating the suitability of online eye tracking for psychological research: Evidence from comparisons with in-person data using emotion–attention interaction tasks

  Behavior Research Methods · 2023-06-20 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Emotional dissociations in temporal associations: opposing effects of arousal on memory for details surrounding unpleasant events

  Cognition & Emotion · 2023-11-21 · 13 citations

  article

  = 150) revealed a "forward-favouring" effect of emotion in temporal memory encoding: Participants encoded associations between negative stimuli and subsequent neutral stimuli more strongly than associations between negative stimuli and preceding neutral stimuli. This finding may reflect a novel trade-off regarding emotion's effects on memory and is relevant for understanding affective disorders, as key clinical symptoms can be conceptualised as maladaptive memory retrieval of temporal details.

  PublisherDOI

• The Human Affectome

  Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · 2023 · 57 citations

  • Psychology
  • Neuroscience

  Over the last decades, theoretical perspectives in the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences have proliferated rather than converged due to differing assumptions about what human affective phenomena are and how they work. These metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions, shaped by academic context and values, have dictated affective constructs and operationalizations. However, an assumption about the purpose of affective phenomena can guide us to a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions. In this capstone paper, we home in on a nested teleological principle for human affective phenomena in order to synthesize metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions. Under this framework, human affective phenomena can collectively be considered algorithms that either adjust based on the human comfort zone (affective concerns) or monitor those adaptive processes (affective features). This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope the Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research.

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• Social Expectations are Primarily Rooted in Reciprocity: An Investigation of Fairness, Cooperation, and Trustworthiness

  Cognitive Science · 2023-08-01 · 11 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Social expectations guide people's evaluations of others' behaviors, but the origins of these expectations remain unclear. It is traditionally thought that people's expectations depend on their past observations of others' behavior, and people harshly judge atypical behavior. Here, we considered that social expectations are also influenced by a drive for reciprocity, and people evaluate others' actions by reflecting on their own decisions. To compare these views, we performed four studies. Study 1 used an Ultimatum Game task where participants alternated Responder and Proposer roles. Modeling participants' expectations suggested they evaluated the fairness of received offers via comparisons to their own offers. Study 2 replicated these findings and showed that observing selfish behavior (lowball offers) only promoted acceptance of selfishness if observers started acting selfishly themselves. Study 3 generalized the findings, demonstrating that they also arise in the Public Goods Game, emerge cross-culturally, and apply to antisocial punishment whereby selfish players punish generosity. Finally, Study 4 introduced the Trust Game and showed that participants trusted players who reciprocated their behavior, even if it was selfish, as much as they trusted generous players. Overall, this research shows that social expectations and evaluations are rooted in drives for reciprocity. This carries theoretical implications, speaking to a parallel in the mechanisms driving both decision-making and social evaluations, along with practical importance for understanding and promoting cooperation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Florin Dolcos

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  72 shared

• Yuta Katsumi

  Harvard University

  25 shared

• Ekaterina Denkova

  University of Miami

  24 shared

• Matthew Moore

  Stanford University

  16 shared

• Alexandru D. Iordan

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  12 shared

• Paul C. Bogdan

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  11 shared

• Yifan Hu

  Changhai Hospital

  9 shared

• Susanne Becker

  9 shared

Labs

• Dolcos LabPI

  Social and Personality Neuroscience, Affective Neuroscience, Cognitive and Affective Aging, Emotional Wellbeing