Stacey M. Schaefer

B.S. in Psychology and Zoology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ph.D. in Psychology (Cognitive Neuroscience), University of Pennsylvania
Co-Leader of the MIDUS Admin Core
PI of the MIDUS Affective Neuroscience Project, Emotion & Wellbeing study, and Emotion in Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease study

Institute on Aging Office:                                                                                    West Campus Office:
2245C Medical Sciences Center                                                                       MIDUS Neuro, Keystone House
1300 University Ave                                                                                               901 University Bay Drive
Madison, WI 53706 USA                                                                                      Madison, WI 53705 USA

My research focus is on the emotional determinants of health and wellbeing and has a goal of gaining a better understanding of how emotional, social, and biological processes interact to impact wellbeing and health outcomes (mental, physical, cognitive, and brain health) across the lifespan.  Both psychophysiological (e.g. facial EMG) and neuroimaging (e.g. fMRI) measures are used to measure individual differences in the time course of emotional responses in the body and the brain to learn how these affective chronometry measures are related to indices of health, wellbeing, and brain aging, and identify the psychosocial, behavioral, and lifestyle factors that moderate those relationships.

Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=30uAMg4AAAAJ&hl=en

Selected Recent Publications

• Abercrombie, H. C., Barnes, A. L., Nord, E. C., Finley, A. J., Higgins, E. T., Grupe, D. W., Rosenkranz, M. A., Davidson, R. J., & Schaefer, S. M. (2023). Inverse association between stress induced cortisol elevations and negative emotional reactivity to stress in humans. Stress, 26(1). DOI: 10.1080/10253890.2023.2174780 PMCID: PMC9930177
• Finley, A. J., Angus, D. J., van Reekum, C. M., Davidson, R. J., & Schaefer, S. M. (2022). Periodic and aperiodic contributions to theta-beta ratios across adulthood. Psychophysiology, 59(11), e14113. http://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.14113 PMCID: PMC9532351.
• Grupe, D. W., Barnes, A. L., Gresham, L., Kirvin-Quamme, A., Nord, E., Alexander, A. L., Abercrombie, H. C., Schaefer, S. M., & Davidson, R. J. (2022). Perceived stress associations with hippocampal-dependent behavior and hippocampal subfield volume. Neurobiology of Stress, 19, 100469. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ynstr.2022.100469 PMCID: PMC9289864
• Pedersen, W. S., Dean III, D. C., Adluru, N., Gresham, L. K., Lee, S. D., Kelly, M. P., Mumford, J. A., Davidson, R. J., & Schaefer, S. M. (2022). Individual Variation in White Matter Microstructure is Related to Better Recovery from Negative Stimuli. Emotion, 22(2), 244-257. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000996 PMCID:PMC8881294
• Urban-Wojcik, E. J., Mumford, J. A., Almeida, D. M., Lachman, M. E., Ryff, C. D., Davidson, R. J., & Schaefer, S. M. (2022). Emodiversity, health, and well-being in the MIDUS daily diary study. Emotion, 22(4), 603-615. doi:10.1037/emo0000753. PMCID:PMC7544683
• Urban-Wojcik, E.J., Lee, S., Grupe, D.W., Quinlan, L., Gresham, L., Hammond, A., Charles, S.T., Lachman, M.E., Almeida, D.M., Davidson, R.J., & Schaefer, S.M., (2022). Diversity of daily activities is associated with greater hippocampal volume. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 22(1), 75-87. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-021-00942-5. PMCID: PMC8792192
• Goldberg, S. B., Flook, L., Hirshberg, M. J., Davidson, R. J., & Schaefer, S. M. (2021). Brief breath awareness training yields poorer working memory performance in the context of acute stress. Cognition and Emotion, 35(5), 1009-1017. doi:10.1080/02699931.2021.1878113 PMCID: PMC8319214
• Puccetti, N., Schaefer, S., van Reekum, C., Ong, A., Almeida, D., Ryff, C., Davidson, R. J., & Heller, A. (2021). Linking amygdala persistence to real-world emotional experience and psychological well-being. The Journal of Neuroscience, 41(16), 3721-3730. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1637-20.2021 PMCID: PMC8055079
• Yu, Q., King, A. P., Yoon, C., Liberzon, I., Schaefer, S. M., Davidson, R. J., & Kitayama, S. (2021). Interdependent Self-Construal Predicts Increased Gray Matter Volume of Scene Processing Regions in the Brain. Biological Psychology, 161, 108050. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2021.108050. PMCID: PMC8375393
• Pedersen, W. S., Schaefer, S. M., Gresham, L. K., Lee, S. D., Kelly, M. P., Mumford, J. A., Oler, J. A., Davidson, R. J. (2020). Higher resting-state BNST-CeA connectivity is associated with greater corrugator supercilii reactivity to negatively valenced images. NeuroImage, 207, 116428. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.116428 PMCID: PMC7058151
• Sommerfeldt, S., Schaefer, S., Mumford, J., Grupe, D., Abercrombie, H., Davidson, R. J. (2020). Neural Correlates of Heart Rate-Subjective Stress Coherence. Biological Psychiatry, 87(9), p. S312. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2020.02.803 PMCID: Policy Exempt.
• Urban-Wojcik, E., Lee, S., Charles, S., Almeida, D., Davidson, R. J., & Schaefer, S. (2020). The Relationship Between Hippocampal Volume and Activity Diversity. Innovation in Aging, 4, Issue Supplement_1, 652-653. doi:10.1093/geroni/igaa057.2249. PMCID: PMC7742556
• Guerrero, J. M., Adluru, N., Bendlin, B. B., Goldsmith, H. H., Schaefer, S. M., Davidson, R. J., Kecskemeti, S. R., Zhang, H., & Alexander, A. L. (2019). Optimizing the intrinsic parallel diffusivity in NODDI: An extensive empirical evaluation. PLOS One, 14(9), e0217118. doi:10.1101/630541 PMCID: PMC6760776
• Sommerfeldt, S. L., Schaefer, S. M., Brauer, M., Ryff, C. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2019). Individual differences in the association between subjective stress and heart rate are related to psychological and physical well-being. Psychological Science, 30(7), 1016-1029. doi:10.1177/0956797619849555 PMCID: PMC6657151
• Golland, Y., Hakim, A., Aloni, T., Schaefer, S., & Levit-Binnun, N. (2018). Affect dynamics of facial EMG during continuous emotional experiences. Biological Psychology, 139, 47-58. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2018.10.003
• Grupe, D. W., Schaefer, S. M., Lapate, R. C., Schoen, A. J., Gresham, L. K., Mumford, J. A., & Davidson, R. J. (2018). Behavioral and neural indices of affective coloring for neutral social stimuli. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 13(3), 310-20. doi: 10.1101/178384 PMCID: PMC5836278
• Schaefer, S. M., van Reekum, C. M., Lapate, R. C., Heller, A. S., Grupe, D. W., & Davidson, R. J. (2018). The Temporal Dynamics of Emotional Responding: Implications for Well-Being and Health From the MIDUS Neuroscience Project. In C. D. Ryff & R. F. Krueger (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Integrative Health Science. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190676384.013.27 PMCID: Policy Exempt.
• van Reekum, C. M., Schaefer, S. M., Lapate, R. C., Norris, C. J., Tun, P. A., Lachman, M. E., Ryff, C. A., & Davidson, R. J. (2018). Aging is associated with a prefrontal lateral-medial shift during picture-induced negative affect. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 13(2), 156-63. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsx144 PMCID: PMC5827343
• Ryff, C. D., Heller, A. S., Schaefer, S. M., van Reekum, C., & Davidson, R. J. (2016). Purposeful engagement, healthy aging, and the brain. Current Behavioral Neuroscience Reports, 3(4), 318–327. doi:10.1007/s40473-016-0096-z PMCID: PMC5438094
• Hanson, J. L., Nacewicz, B. M., Sutterer, M. J., Cayo, A. A., Schaefer, S. M., Rudolph, K. D., Shirtcliff, E. A., Pollak, S. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2015). Behavior problems after early life stress: Contributions of the hippocampus and amygdala. Biological Psychiatry, 77(4), 314–323. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2014.04.020 PMCID: PMC4241384
• Hosseinbor, A. P., Chung, M. K., Koay, C. G., Schaefer, S. M., van Reekum, C. M., Schmitz, L. P., Sutterer, M., Alexander, A. L., & Davidson, R. J. (2015). 4D hyperspherical harmonic (HyperSPHARM) representation of surface anatomy: A holistic treatment of multiple disconnected anatomical structures. Medical Image Analysis, 22(1), 89–101. doi:10.1016/j.media.2015.02.004 PMCID: PMC4405486
• Lapate, R. C., van Reekum, C. M., Schaefer, S. M., Greischar, L. L., Norris, C. J., Bachhuber, D. R. W., Ryff, C. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2014). Prolonged marital stress is associated with short-lived responses to positive stimuli. Psychophysiology, 51(6), 499–509. doi: 10.1111/psyp.12203 PMCID: PMC4008713
• Heller, A. S., van Reekum, C. M., Schaefer, S. M., Lapate, R. C., Radler, B. T., Ryff, C. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2013). Sustained striatal activity predicts eudaimonic well-being and cortisol output. Psychological Science, 24(11), 2191–2200. doi:10.1177/0956797613490744 PMCID: PMC3866962
• Schaefer, S. M., Boylan J. M., van Reekum C. M., Lapate R. C., Norris C. J., Ryff C. D., & Davidson R. J. (2013). Purpose in life predicts better emotional recovery from negative stimuli. PLoS ONE, 8(11), e80329. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0080329 PMCID: PMC3827458