João Guassi Moreira

Research Area(s)
Developmental and Social

Lab Website
Computational Developmental Neuroscience Lab

Research Interests
My work fundamentally concerns how youths acquire cognitive, affective, and social skills needed to navigate life in a world that is rich, complex, and often messy. This motivates my lab to study three broad content areas: emotion and emotion regulation, risky behavior and decision- making, and interactions with known, specific social partners. To comprehensively understand phenomena under these banners, we use data collection methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), capture of naturalistic written text, and ecological momentary assessment to glean insights into the hidden structures of the human mind that are not so easily observed otherwise. Our work is inclusive to data collected by the lab, shared in collaboration with other individual labs, and large consortia studies (e.g., ABCD). To analyze these data, we use a bevy of advanced computational techniques from the fields of computer science, behavioral economics, and quantitative psychology. By doing so we aim to provide tractable explanations of why certain developmental phenomena occur the way they do, while also being able to model future events. Finally, we also dabble in the development of statistical methods in service of aiding scientists with research goals similar to our own.

Representative Publications
Guassi Moreira, J. F., Sahi, R. S., Calderon Leon, M. D., Saragosa-Harris, N. M., Waizman, Y. H., Sedykin, A. E., Ninova, E., Peris, T. S., Gross, J. J., & Silvers, J. A. (2024). A data-driven typology of emotion regulation profiles. Emotion, 24(5), 1125–1136.

Guassi Moreira, J. F., Méndez Leal, A. S., Waizman, Y. H., Saragosa-Harris, N., Ninova, E., & Silvers, J. A. (2021). Revisiting the neural architecture of adolescent decision-making: Univariate and multivariate evidence for system-based models. Journal of Neuroscience, 41(28), 6006-6017.

Guassi Moreira, J. F., Méndez Leal, A. S., Waizman, Y. H., Tashjian, S. M., Galván, A., & Silvers, J. A. (2023). Value-based neural representations predict social decision preferences. Cerebral Cortex, 33(13), 8605-8619.

Guassi Moreira, J.F., Méndez Leal, A.S., Waizman, Y.H., Saragosa-Harris, N., Ninova, E., & Silvers, J.A. (2022). Early caregiving adversity differentially shapes behavioral sensitivity to reward and risk during decision-making. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(12), 3249–3267

Guassi Moreira, J. F., McLaughlin, K. A., & Silvers, J. A. (2019). Spatial and temporal cortical variability track with age and affective experience during emotion regulation in youth. Developmental Psychology, 55(9), 1921–1937