Christina L. Fales, Ph.D.
Young Investigator

Christina Fales is a post-doctoral fellow in the Psychology Department at Washington Unversity in St. Louis. Under the direction of Dr. Deanna Barch, she uses functional neuro-imaging to study the effect of clinical depressionand anxiety on the recruitment of cognitive-control areas of the brain. She is further interested in personality traits such as negative affectivity as a risk factor for anxiety and mood disorders. She hypothesizes that this relationship is mediated by dysfunctional interactions between cognitive-control and
"default-mode" brain networks that predispose individuals to reduced cognitive flexibility and increased rumination. Dr. Fales received a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles where with her graduate advisor Dr. Barbara Knowlton, she studied task switching and cognitive flexibility in basal ganglia disease.

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