Stacey Schaefer

Understanding Unfolding Lives: The Integrative Science of MIDUS

Stacey M. Schaefer is a cognitive-affective neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Institute on Aging. Dr. Schaefer is P.I. of the longitudinal Midlife in the United States National Study of Health and Wellbeing (MIDUS) Affective Neuroscience Project. She received her B.S. in Psychology and Zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ph.D. in Psychology with a specialization in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on identifying the linkages between individual differences in affective chronometry measures of emotional responses, health, wellbeing, and brain aging, as well as the sociodemographic, psychosocial, and lifestyle factors that moderate those relationships. Stacey also is P.I. of a study in collaboration with the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer Prevention examining how emotional processes may contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s Disease, and is co-PI of a large R01 study examining how individual differences in the time course of emotional responses (measured with neuroimaging, psychophysiology, and ecological momentary assessment) are important for mental health, stress regulation, the immune system, cognition, and coping with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.